The possibilities with web design are virtually limitless. It can be tempting when designing a new website to incorporate all the latest whizz-bang features, but at the end of the day, these features are only a good idea if they help your users find the content they desire.
Sara explains more in today’s Top Tip Tuesday video.
Best Practices for SEO Friendly Web Design
- Lots of White Space. Having dense blocks of text on your web page is a surefire recipe for losing visitors. People like to digest their web content in short, scannable, bite-sized paragraphs. Incorporate white space by keeping your paragraphs short and increasing the leading.
- Clear Navigation. If you’ve ever been on a website with an unfriendly navigation structure, you know how maddening it can be. Put the most important pages that users would want to access (e.g. product/service pages, About Us and Contact Us) in the top-level nav bar, and incorporate internal links to guide users between pages as appropriate.
- Fast Load Speed. Web users are an impatient bunch, and search engines know this. Google and other search engines will reward web pages that load quickly over those that do not. An optimal page load speed should be less than 1.5 seconds. If your web pages are taking longer than this to load, consider speeding them up by leveraging browser caching, minifying your code and compressing your images.
- Appropriate Visuals. Pictures, infographics and videos can deliver information much more effectively than text. But these elements should only be incorporated if they are relevant and useful. Don’t include a video or a random stock image just for the sake of doing so. Ask yourself, does this help the user?
- Clear Calls-To-Action. When designing your website, you should have a clear conversion path in mind and make it easier for visitors to follow this conversion path. Your visitors should never be at a loss for where to click or tap in order to complete a desired action. Make your calls-to-actions obvious in the form of bright, colourful buttons.
Incorporating these five best practices into your web design will be much more beneficial to your bottom line than implementing the latest fancy features.