SEO shouldn’t be an afterthought in web design but a goal

Search engine optimisation starts with the design

Search engines use various metrics to rank websites. Some of the most important measure how much you engage readers to stay on a page and encourage them to explore your website. In other words, what user-experience (UX) do you offer end-users?

UX is vitally important for SEO. If end-users cannot find the information they are looking for, struggle to navigate your website or cannot progress to the next page because a link does not work, they leave.

Site departures are recorded by a search engine metric called ‘bounce rate’. If your bounce rate is high, say over 50%, it is a signal to search engines that you are not providing end-users with a good UX. Your website will, therefore, be awarded a low-rank position.

Why SEO is important in design 

The design and layout have a direct impact on how end-users use and interact with a website. It also has an impact on whether visitors hang around. Websites have to be user-friendly. Therefore, various factors need to be put in place during the design process and not shoe-horned in afterwards. That usually means more work later.

For web designers, upload speeds should be a major priority. Surveys show that end-users will click out if a website has not loaded within three seconds. Therefore, your design should not include demanding imagery and unnecessary features that involve a lot of code.

SEO infrastructure

When you consider SEO from the very beginning of the design, it strengthens SEO performance of a website from the start too and enables web designers to put an infrastructure in place that performs effectively in search results.

Because upgrades in digital technology change the online landscape so often, websites have to be adaptable at a moment's notice. And if SEO is not in the foundations of your web design it could affect the ability of a website to perform well in search engines moving forward.