SEO is usually not a designer’s number one concern when working on a web design project. But for a website to be successful and trackable, SEO must be taken into consideration from the beginning of the website design process.
Here are three quick tips to design with SEO in mind:
Design for the long run.
Design trends come and go, but SEO will always be around – you can’t ignore it. Just because single-page, long-scroll sites are the new, hot trend, doesn’t mean you should implement this trend into your design without careful consideration. Some design experiences that may be engaging and exciting to the user, like parallax design and long scroll pages, cause problems for search engines. You want to spread out your keywords across multiple pages and not have them all live within one URL. Responsive web design remains the best practice for visual appeal, as well as for SEO.
Have a clear site map and navigation structure.
Having a good navigation structure is crucial for SEO and the user. Balancing the number of choices the user encounters with the categories and keywords in the navigation presents a challenge. Be sure to keep the most clicked links in prominent locations to avoid losing the user in their journey throughout your site.
Optimize your images.
Take the time to optimize your images. Search engines can only see images through file names and alt-tags; they cannot “see” the physical representation of the image.
Quick steps on how best to optimize your image:
Change the name of the file to something descriptive using hyphens (not “_” or “+”).
IMG_4558.jpg à red-apple-on-counter.jpg
After you insert your image into your web page, access the HTML to change the alt-attribute (this can also be done in the media editor in WordPress).
HTML:
<img src=”red-apple-on-counter.jpg” alt=”Red apple on the counter” />
WORDPRESS:
While these things may seem trivial when considering the visual design of a website, they are steps that need to be taken from the beginning of the process to ensure the best success.
