People tend to give attention to one or two elements when trying to improve a website’s performance. While doing this, they neglect other elements that can turn out to be important. The fact is that focusing on various factors can lead to success in digital marketing.
It takes more than just SEO to do better in SERP since your website also needs to do well. Otherwise, you risk losing all of the organic equity you’ve been building.
Remember that search engine optimization and web design work together. Their components intermingle and flow together when executed correctly. That’s why hiring a web designer to create a website and bringing in SEO as an afterthought must be avoided.
Both website design and SEO must be involved during the early stages of development. This will lead to the creation of a website that’s SEO-friendly for a higher ranking. It will also provide an opportunity for your SEO to see the complexities of the website’s design.
Ranking Your Website at the Top Using SEO and Web Design
Sometimes you may think that your design and optimization work well by hiring one person. But you must know that web design and SEO are two distinct fields. So you’re better off getting a web design company and an SEO consultant.
Web design services will help you in staying abreast of the ever-changing trends. Website design companies in New York are some of the best web development services focused on result-driven solutions. They have a proven track record of what it takes to have a successful website. So reach out to them for a partnership in getting your website to rank higher.
Let’s now get into the details of how to go about getting a website to rank at the top.
1. Increased Website Speed
Website speed is one of the key aspects of technical SEO. So if your site has been slowing down, it might be because of the web design. It could be that the slow speed is making people bounce quickly. Remember that page speed is a known ranking signal, hence, you must ensure you speed up the website.
This can be done by eliminating unnecessary plugins. As well as optimizing the images, enabling browser caching, and a lot more. Sometimes you’ll assume that your site loads quickly enough. But you never know how long site visitors are willing to wait.
A site should take two seconds to load. If it takes longer than three seconds, half of the users are likely to abandon it. Apart from being important to users, page speed is also important to Google. The reason is that it affects Google’s ability to crawl it.
This means that a slow page speed causes Google to crawl fewer pages. So you won’t have as many pages getting indexed, and if this happens, it becomes difficult for such pages to rank high.
2. Have a Link-Worthy Site
A content-rich web page that’s authoritative and unbiased enables visitors to learn about what they are interested in. This kind of webpage also attracts links from other websites, which boosts your SEO.
Enhance your site’s authority and credibility by adding relevant links. Rather than have “click here” links, you can write the name of the destination. “Click here” has no search engine value aside from the attached URL. So use descriptive links by linking keywords. It improves search engine optimization and adds value to the reader.
3. Connect to Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are a good publicity and engagement tool. That’s why it’s important that you connect your website to your social media pages. It will help to direct more traffic to your site and improve its visibility.
Social media provides several options to diversify your content. This will help to promote your business by using images and heavy text usage.
There are social media platforms for video and short-text contexts such as Instagram. Different social media platforms will help you reach a large number of audiences. The good news is that it enables you to serve all your clients through their preferred medium.
4. Mobile-Friendliness
If you’re familiar with SEO and web design, then you know that a website’s mobile-friendliness is important. If you don’t, then you’re already a few years behind.
Google made mobile-friendliness a ranking factor in April 2015. Two years later, this search giant introduced mobile-first indexing. So it’s clear to see how much Google values mobile-friendliness.
Over the past few years, there has been a decrease in the number of people using desktops. On the other hand, the number of people using mobile devices has had a boost. A lot of the web traffic now comes from mobile devices. This means that the majority of your audience is on mobile phones.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, you’ll certainly lose a lot of users. A website with a high bounce rate due to a slow loading speed on mobile sends a wrong signal to Google.
5. Regular Updates of the Content
Search engines feel pretty strongly about content. As such, a regular update of content is considered a good indicator of the site’s relevance. That’s why you must audit your content on a set schedule to keep it fresh.
Writing more content that’s rich in keyword phrases, also boosts the website’s ranking. With blog posts, you can make shorter updates about the specific topics you’re targeting. Inter-linking also gives a better picture or adds more information about the topic.
6. Caption Images and Videos
Winning SEO strategies are heavily dependent on the perception of search engine spiders. This is to say that your site’s performance depends on how the search spiders view your content.
The problem is that the technology to read the information on images and videos is still primitive. As a result, you have to read the details on behalf of search engine spiders. Captioning is the best way to ascertain that the search spiders capture the information.
Use keywords to caption images and videos as it helps them to rank higher during the organic search. It also enables them to be competitive. When users search for specific content like videos and pictures.
7. Gaining the Trust of Users
Measuring how much people trust your website is not easy. However, it’s still important that website visitors trust your website. That’s because it plays a part in making it rank higher. Some people are quick at forming opinions and it’s difficult to change their minds.
When you open a website, you’ll naturally expect to have a wonderful user experience. Users expect a website that they can easily navigate and find the information they need. That’s because such websites seem trustworthy.
When a website looks old, outdated, and difficult to use, many users will leave a bad impression. You may have a product that’s exactly what they are looking for. But if your website doesn’t convey that, users will think that you’re not making an effort.
Conclusion
To improve your website’s ranking, it’s best to improve both web design and SEO. Keep these factors in mind when designing your site, and you’ll soon see the higher rankings that have been eluding you.