We have a lot of clients who come to us for SEO campaigns and are surprised when we start talking to them about the design of their website as well. “But our website is fine, we don’t want a redesign, we just want you to do some SEO on it so it ranks higher in search engines.” If only it was that easy!
What do we look at when optimising your website?
When we look at optimising your website for the search engines, we look at both the front end (content) and the back end (HTML code and the actual architecture of the site). This is because Google’s algorithm focuses on how real humans interact with the front end of your site and how their bot crawlers interact with the back end of your site. They then use this information to decide how user-friendly your site is and whether your content is of good quality or not.
SEO is a complicated subject because there are over 200 things that go into Google’s algorithm, which means we have a lot of things to think about when it comes to content and web design – but the thing that ties everything together is the question: “Is your website user-friendly?”
Why is bounce rate so important?
You can spend hours tweaking this and that on your site but it will make absolutely no difference if people bounce off it within the first 8 seconds of landing on it. To do this you need to make sure your page content clearly states what the page is about, is relevant to the keywords the user is searching for, and they find the page useful and stay on it for a long time to consume the content.
In the past, the focus has been on making websites look good for Google, whereas now the focus is on making the website work well for humans – and Google will then also rank it higher as well.
What does on-page optimisation cover?
Some of the things we look at when we are making your website work well for both humans and search engines are:
- SEO friendly URLs – include relevant keywords and keep it short & simple
- Optimised title tags/meta descriptions – show users they will find the answer they are looking for on your page and improve Click-Through Rates (CTRs)
- High-quality, useful content – high-quality fresh content which makes good use of subheadings and isn’t keyword stuffed
- Use internal links to improve link equity – Good internal links can aid in website navigation for both humans and Google bots.
This is just a brief overview of on-page optimisation and how important user-friendly website design is for SEO but we hope it has given you a clearer idea of the relationship they have – and why we often talk about web design in SEO meetings.
If you would like us to take a look at your website design and SEO campaign to see if there are things that you could be doing differently – please get in touch today. We have offices in both Manchester and Cheshire.
Why is a user-friendly website so important for SEO?
Digital SEO Web Design and Development / Dec 9, 2019
We have a lot of clients who come to us for SEO campaigns and are surprised when we start talking to them about the design of their website as well. “But our website is fine, we don’t want a redesign, we just want you to do some SEO on it so it ranks higher in search engines.” If only it was that easy!
What do we look at when optimising your website?
When we look at optimising your website for the search engines, we look at both the front end (content) and the back end (HTML code and the actual architecture of the site). This is because Google’s algorithm focuses on how real humans interact with the front end of your site and how their bot crawlers interact with the back end of your site. They then use this information to decide how user-friendly your site is and whether your content is of good quality or not.
SEO is a complicated subject because there are over 200 things that go into Google’s algorithm, which means we have a lot of things to think about when it comes to content and web design – but the thing that ties everything together is the question: “Is your website user-friendly?”
Why is bounce rate so important?
You can spend hours tweaking this and that on your site but it will make absolutely no difference if people bounce off it within the first 8 seconds of landing on it. To do this you need to make sure your page content clearly states what the page is about, is relevant to the keywords the user is searching for, and they find the page useful and stay on it for a long time to consume the content.
In the past, the focus has been on making websites look good for Google, whereas now the focus is on making the website work well for humans – and Google will then also rank it higher as well.
What does on-page optimisation cover?
Some of the things we look at when we are making your website work well for both humans and search engines are:
- SEO friendly URLs – include relevant keywords and keep it short & simple
- Optimised title tags/meta descriptions – show users they will find the answer they are looking for on your page and improve Click-Through Rates (CTRs)
- High-quality, useful content – high-quality fresh content which makes good use of subheadings and isn’t keyword stuffed
- Use internal links to improve link equity – Good internal links can aid in website navigation for both humans and Google bots.
This is just a brief overview of on-page optimisation and how important user-friendly website design is for SEO but we hope it has given you a clearer idea of the relationship they have – and why we often talk about web design in SEO meetings.
If you would like us to take a look at your website design and SEO campaign to see if there are things that you could be doing differently – please get in touch today. We have offices in both Manchester and Cheshire.
