The primary goal of building a website for businesses is to gain the attention of potential and existing customers. To direct people to your site, you need search engines to notice you first. To do that, you need to employ search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
SEO is the process of putting a website together so that it can gain a higher rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs). A lot of people confuse this with the notion that they need to build a perfect site. In fact, SEO’s goal is not to be perfect but to be ahead of the competition by providing more relevant content that answers the user’s search intent. It does not necessarily mean that an optimized website has a better design aesthetic compared to competing sites but rather because it highlights what the searcher is browsing for.
One of the elements of SEO that is not given much attention is website design. What many fail to realize is that the moment they contact a website design company in Vancouver, they need to consider the optimization works that come with it.
What Is SEO Web Design?
Designing websites is a process of creating that online presence for a business, individual, school, group, organization, business, government, and other entities. Designers use a variety of tools and combine these with computer languages like HTML, Javascript, Ajax, PHP, XML, and MySQL. Surely, there are other ways to build a website but the touch of professional designers can also determine how well it will be performing in the rankings game.
Instead of competing, the SEO and web design team can work together to incorporate optimization techniques in the coming together of a website. This is a crucial point for a business since it reduces revisions and reworks in the future. Choose a web development agency in Toronto that has both web design and SEO teams so it is easier for them to work together on your site.
The principle of SEO web design is simple — the design should be compatible with SEO so that it will draw more traffic. The website should follow aesthetic rules to catch the attention of the readers but it should accommodate the hidden elements that make websites search engine and user friendly.
Websites that are not readily accessible to search engines do not have high rankings on the search engine results page (SERPs). It is a sound decision then to integrate SEO appropriately in the website development process for your Toronto business.
Reasons SEO Web Design Is Important
As you prepare to put up your site with the help of a website design company in Vancouver, you need to understand the importance of incorporating SEO into the process. Here are reasons why these two should work together:
- You attract and keep visitors to your site
Say you are a catering company that loves to offer a memorable celebration of life for Toronto clients, you want your site to attract the market you wish to do business with. You are attracting people who have the potential to do business with you. Your website acts as the face of your company. If you want to leave them with a great first impression, make sure that you are putting your best foot forward content- and design-wise.
- SEO website design is your key to a responsive website
What is worse than a website that lacks content? One that does not load easily.
Expert web designers know that the slower the websites load the greater the chances of losing visitors and increasing bounce rates. According to several studies, if websites load for 2 seconds, around 12% of the people will abandon them. If the loading time is at 4 seconds, 25% of the visitors will be lost. This is a scenario you don’t want to see for your site, so make sure that the site loads fast.
- You attract valuable traffic
Getting help from a web development agency in Toronto opens the potentials for you to attract people to your site. They do this by incorporating design process, style elements, features, imagery, widgets, and texts that stir the interest of your target market. The data that they need to take on the task, however, lies in the hands of the SEO team.
They need to determine the following:
- The target market with the complete persona to guide in the design process.
- The keywords that are being targeted to incorporate these in the headline layout.
- The visuals resonate with the audience.
- The social media platforms that they visit.
- The search intent.
- The competitor persona.
- Create a seamless customer experience
Visitors have very high expectations with websites that show up on top of the SERPs. Not only are they looking at an aesthetically-pleasing portal but more importantly, that this can provide them with a good experience. Factoring in with your collaboration with a website design company in Vancouver is the customer experience. Your goal is to deliver more than what the visitor is expecting.
Apart from the good colour choices, the site should also be organized, have good segmentation, and with all elements in harmony. The SEO and web design team should offer users a seamless experience as they click through pages.
- SEO web design converts
Attracting people to visit your website is only half the deal, the other half is closing the sale or getting them to do what is stated in your call to action. This means raking in high-quality traffic.
SEO guides the person through the site’s internal links and take them to the desired action. However, aside from this ultimate goal, you also need to consider the micro-conversions that include the following:
- Click a link
- Watch a video
- Sign up for a newsletter
- Click a box
- Take a quiz
In building a website, there is no greater and lesser role. Each task should work together to achieve the business’ ultimate goal. With this in mind, taking the SEO and web design team to work together is the soundest choice to make.