SEO & Web Design Go Hand in Hand

So much of SEO involves having a website that's properly structured and optimized for critical keyword phrases. If your SEO company isn't also your Web designer, here's what you need to know. SEO and Website Design go hand in hand. They have to not only like each other, but live together in perfect harmony. If they don't the "Third Wheel" search rankings will make your life miserable.



Great metaphor right? So let's look at the details and you'll see exactly what I mean. Ages ago, at least in Internet years we used to have this cool technology called Flash. And man could it make some cool websites. Things would move around on the screen, you could play audio, site visitors could interact with the site and the site would change based on those interactions... really cool web design right? Well, yes, but Mrs. SEO got completely left out. Websites made completely with Flash were nearly invisible to search engines. It made for a "Website Design Boys Night Out" and "Mrs. SEO" was left at home.

Things aren't that bad today Flash is pretty much dead and most Web design is done in HTML so the search engines can properly index the site, but design and SEO still have to get along. If the Web designer is only concerned about how the site looks, it tends to get image heavy and while the site may look great and be pleasing to the eye, Google and the other search engines aren't going to find that site so attractive (beauty is only skin deep right!). If we let the SEO side of things take over, we'll have 2,000 word documents as Web pages with zero visual appeal. Building a website that looks good and is still ranked well by the search engines is still, and I suspect always will be, a balancing act.

This point was made abundantly clear to me recently while working on a monthly SEO campaign for a Phoenix business. The site had been built by someone else in WordPress with a template or theme and while it looked good, it was missing key SEO factors. For instance on the Homepage the H1 was wrapped around the slide show, so there was no text marked as the headline for Google to evaluate. It was one of the new "sliding bar" looking sites so as you scrolled down the page bars of color with a call out text message would reveal itself. I hate these types of sites for two reasons. Number one they completely miss the boat from an SEO perspective, and number two as a site visitor there's very little real information here. I know I'm not "normal" (just ask my wife), but I actually like to read about something I'm interested in and these site designs always leave me wanting more information and no place to get it.

Our solution has always (for the last 20 years at least) been to try and balance having a site that looks good, but that still provides plenty of text content for Google to sink their teeth into (and rank well) along with enough eye candy images and bullet points for those that want to skim and look at pretty pictures. The content of the page typically looks something like this...
 

Header

H1 / Headline

Image

Short Executive Summary

Bullet Points and/or Images

Body Copy 300+ Words

Footer

We feel that's a nice balance between design and SEO, provides a quick read for those with short attention spans, photos for those that just like to look at the pictures, and then real meat for those that want to dig deeper and learn more about the product, service, or topic at hand. I know, it is a little old school, but it works. We've got plenty of client's that rank in the #1 spot in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page) for their chosen keyword phrases AND they convert site visitors into customers. And isn't that why you wanted a website in the first place?

If you area ready for a proven solution that works give us a call. We can make sure Mr. Web Designer and Mrs. SEO live happily ever after. Then implementing a monthly SEO campaign for on-site content development and off-page citation and link building delivers site visitors ready to do business with you. Contact Us here, or call us at 602-427-5626 ext 1 for sales and your match made in Google heaven!