Following on from our recent team-building event, which saw us go head-to-head with one of our web design partners in a… *ahem*… ’friendly’ go-kart battle, we take a look at the issues involved with creating a strong website and how to find the perfect balance between achieving great SEO results and clean, user-friendly design.
When creating a website for your business, it’s important to ensure it is engaging, designed beautifully and highly functional. However, it is also vital for your site to be found easily – this is where SEO comes into play. Search Engine Optimisation is now an essential factor when doing any kind of website design or digital marketing. SEO is the key online marketing tool that drives people to your website and ensures visibility on the most widely-used search engines.
Finding a Balance
The goals of web design and Search Engine Optimisation can sometimes be in opposition; while web design is trending towards minimalism with little use of text, SEO requires the use of keywords throughout the page.
Obviously, this trend for simplicity and using images to engage visitors and create a user journey doesn’t leave a lot of room for well-optimised pages that have been laced with relevant keywords. And on the flip-side, a nicely designed website can appear beautiful, clean and minimalist but may lack the important information needed bring visitors to your door.
This creates a chicken and egg paradox: do you create a text-heavy, SEO-optimised page that might seem overwhelming to the user? Or create a simple, attractive page that lacks key info and may get lost in a sea of other web pages? How do you find the balance? What determines what a perfect, contemporary-looking and SEO-optimised page looks like?
Page Intentions
The best thing about SEO is that it’s page-specific. One page can rank for this while another ranks for that – but for every webpage you create, ensure you have decided its purpose before you publish it. If the webpage has been created purely to be a landing page for a paid ad campaign, then a clean, simple, image-focused page will appeal to users. But if the page is intended to rank organically on search engine result pages – as the majority of them are – then highly-optimised pages with well-considered copy is essential.
Clever Site Architecture
As well as the usual SEO practices, there are various other clever site architecture techniques you can implement that won’t affect the clean design of a site and will also help with search engine ranking.
- Blogs
Regularly posting blogs are a great way of adding content to a site that is rich in relevant keywords, attractive and engaging imagery (with keyword-optimised alt-text), internal links pointing to other related pages on your site – all without cluttering up important key landing pages where slick design needs to take priority.
- Section Headings
Originally intended to resize text on a webpage, H1-H6 section headings also help search engines understand the organisation of content on a particular page. Both users and search engines don’t want to have to wade through long blocks of text to ascertain exactly what it’s about. Arranging written content into smaller sections helps users digest the information and leads to improved organic search engine ranking.
- Expandable divs
In addition to well-optimised blogs, another great way of adding indexable content on a site is by creating expandable divs. These collapsible sections are revealed by clicking on a small section of the screen and display more in-depth information about something, such as a product or service, including relevant images which help increase conversions and user engagement. Expandable divs offer the advantage of having little effect on minimalist page design while creating great SEO results by providing long tail text to index on search engines.
- Calls to Action
The ultimate goal of any e-commerce site is create a simple and convenient way for people to purchase your products or services. A simple way to encourage conversions is by including a call to action in the form of buttons, links and images accompanied by text that explains to users the outcome of their action. The purpose of a call to action is to guide the user quickly and simply along the sales funnel by encouraging them to purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter, request a catalogue, etc.
- Internal Linking
Creating internal links in a piece of content that point users towards a related resource can improve SEO results. Search engines find your pages best when they’re linked to from elsewhere. Links also give search engines a better idea of the structure of your website because they’re able to establish a hierarchy of pages on your site and attach better link value to the pages that are higher up.
iMarketing is an Ipswich SEO agency that knows exactly how to expertly balance the needs of the search engines with contemporary design that works for visitors. Contact us today for a free website review and quote by calling 01473 589899 or emailing info@imarketing.co.uk.
