Search engine optimisation determines whether your website will compete against other websites or not. Without SEO your website will be lost to the world and that means no matter how much effort you put into the design of your website it will go to waste whether you like it or not. The only problem with this is that some websites only concentrate on the SEO campaign and not on the websites design, which can affect the traffic level resulting in a waste of money. So how can you find the fine line to ensure your website reaches the level it should be to attract and keep visitors?
A website can rank highly for the best terms in it’s industry but that doesn’t matter if the website isn’t easy to use. I’ve come across websites in the past which have ranked number highly for my search queries but have been impossible to read, thus me moving on to the next website and so on. If this happens you will create a high bounce rate for your website which is not good. You must ensure it works correctly else you will lose a lot of traffic which you’ve worked so hard to attract.
Key areas to concentrate on in terms of design are navigation, accessibility and loading times. If your website can’t supply any of these three then it may as well seize to exist as it can become a nuisance using a website which is poorly designed. Ensure the linking structure on your website is easy to find and move around – if the navigation is like driving without a road then people will give up and move on to another website. Not everyone has the same benefits that we have, such as vision and hearing. By ensuring people with accessibility problems can still use the website will give your website a much better chance in attracting this audience. If your website loads slowly then people will give up and leave, it’s as simple as that. The quicker your website loads the better chance people will stay and a higher chance of ranking highly in Google SERP due to its recent announcement of determining page rankings by assessing page loading speeds.
If you have any other tips that can help people optimise the design of their website then leave a comment.
Great blog. So many blogs like yours cover subjects that just aren’t covered by magazines. I don’t know how we got on 12 years ago with just print media.