Why SEO and Web Design Needs To Work Hand In Hand

Good SEO and web design goes hand in hand especially when you want to obtain good rankings on search engines.

Your homepage is the perfect place to start for quality SEO and web design. It’s the page your potential customers are most likely to see first and likely the only chance you have to catch their attention.

To be successful you need to pull your customers in. But you also need search engines to give you that exposure to attract customers in the first place. Hence you need an SEO friendly homepage and that’s what this post is about.

So let’s start. First things first.

Focussing On  Quality SEO and Web Design For Your Homepage

Your homepage is the most important page on your website and should be treated as such. The purpose of your homepage is to be the most search friendly page you have. In addition, all of the other pages on your website should be easily accessible from your homepage. This gives you a more opportunity to optimize your on-site SEO by adding some internal links that you’re going to need. (More on that later.)

Have A Clear Goal

Now that you’ve got the organization of the site figured out, your next objective is a bit more fun. You get to make a cool homepage that customers and SEO are going to love.

First and foremost, your homepage should be simple. You want to avoid scaring potential clients away with large blocks of texts. No one likes large boxes of text. Not you and definitely not search engines. Walls of text are a disaster when it comes to SEO and web design especially on your homepage.

Make your page visually appealing. Studies have shown that humans now have an attention span shorter than goldfish so visual images go a long way. Seriously, people love visuals so make it a priority. Check out this article about using animated gifs to improve your email marketing results.

Make It Simple

Simplicity goes a long way in SEO and web design. It keeps readers and potential customers interested and keeps page loading times short.

After all, short loading times are key. People are going to hit the back button if they have to wait ages for your page to load. It’s also a nuisance getting an slow loading page on a phone. Did you know Google prioritizes fast loading websites over slower ones? That should be reason enough, right?

There’s several ways to make your page light and fast to load. Large images for example are a terrible for load times and SEO. Keep file sizes small. And if you’re planning to design a wordpress site, then this article about improving wordpress page loading speed would be useful.

Have A Powerful Site Title

First off, your title should be the only bit of text with an H1 tag in it. This makes it clear to search engines and to site visitors. Your site title needs to embody the entire theme of the website. This is your chance to communicate what exactly your brand is.

An easy and powerful trick to add a boost to online traffic is to include your site keywords into the title. Search engines love it.

Speaking of keywords…

Know What Your Keywords Are And Own Them

Keywords are powerful and are crucial in getting your site listed high on search engines. You need to know right away what they are so you can use them to their full potential.

Don’t just focus on one keyword. Have a small list of them (but keep the list short). This makes the job easier for search engine crawlers when they’re scanning for your content.

Want more help with keywords? We have a guide on how to properly use Google Keyword Planner.

Make Sure Your Logo Is Present and Visible

This one should come to no surprise. After all, how are you supposed to get your brand image across if no one can see your logo?

Have a Clear Call To Action

This is the surest way to increase engagement on the site. When visitors arrive on your site, what exactly do you want them to do?

If you want people to subscribe to your newsletter or to purchase your product, you need to be clear and direct about it.

Do You Have Links?

Links on your homepage are a sure way to improve your SEO and web design. Every internal link you include on your homepage increases the relevancy of your homepage in the eyes of search engines.

An easy way to do this is to include several relevant links on the bottom of your homepage kind of like a footer. It keeps your website organized and still gives you all the benefits that come with internal linking throughout your site.

Better yet, it eliminates clutter and doesn’t distract from the rest of your page.

Let People Scroll

Your homepage should involve a bit of scrolling.  Think of it like story telling. There are some pretty creative and fun concepts you can come up with to grab people’s attention. Most importantly, keep in mind all of your future readers who are going to visit your site on their phones on the bus.

Do you really think they’re going to enjoy pinching and zooming to read the small text instead of easily swiping their finger? Of course not. Make your web design fun.

Have a Short and Sweet Metatag Description

Your metatag is the first thing users see when they’re skimming through Google. You need to have your company name there and a brief description but anything else is overkill. Try to keep the description as simple as possible.

Think of the Meta Description as a sales pitch. Though it doesn’t affect the rankings on search engines, but a good meta description increases the chances of someone clicking on your website.

Include A Video

This is a concept that isn’t used everywhere but there are some serious benefits to having video right on your homepage. For one thing, 64% of users who watch a landing page video are more likely to make a purchase online.

That’s cool, isn’t it? A quality and relevant video can give you a serious boost in backlinks. If anything else, it’s a unique and powerful way to connect with your audience.

Now that you understand how SEO and Web Design goes hand in hand, its important to find a web designer who’s also familiar with SEO. Getting a cheap web designer may be able to create a cool website, but if it doesn’t rank on Search Engines like Google, then you’re losing a lot of opportunities.