Design and SEO: Why does Design matter for SEO, and what can you do about it?

Design matters for SEO. A well-designed website will be more appealing to the viewer and, therefore, more likely to convert. It will also rank higher on search engines because of its aesthetic appeal and overall user experience. When someone clicks on a website, they only take a couple of seconds to determine whether or not to continue reading. And if users are returning to the search engine results page (SERP) before even looking at your content, then something is wrong with your design. If your design isn’t enticing people in, your SEO rankings will decline. So, what design choices should you make to help SEO? Here are some of them.

Create a clean and simple layout: A clean and simple layout may not seem like a big deal, but it is. A cluttered design with elements that are too busy will turn off potential customers. They won’t stay on your site for long because nothing is appealing about it. The same goes for the text – make sure to keep it easy to read without overwhelming them with information or images.

Make use of white space: White space allows people to focus more easily on what they’re reading/viewing rather than get distracted by any other element in the background, such as colors, shapes, or photos. If you have no idea how much white space you should add to your website, try using around 20% because this shows enough room between each element in your design, but not too much that it looks empty.

Make the right font choice: The correct use of fonts is also essential for your SEO strategy because fonts directly influence readability. For example, if you look at any printed material such as books or magazines, larger texts are used to highlight titles or subtitles and smaller ones for regular paragraphs. You can do something similar on your website with large headlines and small subheadings below them along with body copy, all sized appropriately based on their importance. Don’t forget about colors either – make sure to pick one that stimulates your target market to read the text.

Integrate keywords naturally: This isn’t about stuffing content with words relevant only to what you’re trying to rank for in Google; instead, it’s more of a reminder that they should be included throughout the copy without standing out too much. An easy way is to make your keywords not repeated in every other sentence within an article or blog post so search engines can tell where most importance lies and prioritize accordingly when crawling through pages on your site.

Make use of images but don’t overdo it either: People love photos because even if they have zero interest in reading anything, they will still enjoy looking at them. You can include these by using stock photography which doesn’t require attribution, but you can also take your own photos and use them as long as they adhere to Google’s image policy.

Don’t forget about mobile: More than half of all internet users are now browsing from their smartphones which means if your site isn’t optimized for these devices, it won’t rank very well in search engines because there is no point crawling a page that doesn’t exist on mobile devices. This is why responsive design has become more critical – sites should automatically resize depending on what device they’re viewed on so visitors get an optimal viewing experience regardless of what they choose to read the content on.

Keep your content fresh: This means updating your website as often as possible with fresh content, which is a great way to attract new visitors because they will want to come back for more. For example, you could write blog posts that coincide with current events or trends to capitalize on them and get traffic from google searches related to those subjects.

Increase your speed: Nobody wants to wait around for a page to load, especially if they’re using their smartphone, which can be frustrating. The best way to avoid this is by optimizing images, so they occupy less space. Also, make sure any unnecessary pages or scripts are removed from the site construction. You should also keep an eye on Google Analytics because slow loading times will contribute toward bounce rates within reports which may lead people straight into reconsidering whether or not they’d like to return.

In the end, make sure you are also keeping an eye on your competitors. This means doing research and seeing how they’re ranking for specific keywords. This will help you better understand what it takes to achieve similar results without blindly copying them (i.e., you don’t want to follow the same strategy). You can also check out their Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts because these may provide ways you could potentially improve upon current content.