Preparing for SEO in the Website Design Process

SEO and website design go hand in hand – if you’ve recently launched your new website, you are going to want people to be able to find it, making SEO necessary but at the same time if your website is not ready for the optimisation process, you’ll have difficulties getting your website ranking well.

When you begin your website design, make sure your web designers spend time making an overall strategy. One which involves the actual design process as well as what online marketing you’re going to tackle once the website is live. This will allow you  to put some plans into place to make your marketing strategy easier to implement in the long term.

When Google’s algorithm decides where a website will rank for a certain keyword it considers a huge number of elements. Much research has been done around the assumption that good website design leads to an easier optimisation process, and many leading SEO experts agree. Here are a few of the points which your website designer should be considering when designing your website:

  • Don’t over do it with images and flash

The very worst thing for a website, if you’re wanting to feature in the search engine results is to fill your website with flash and images. Search engines can’t read images properly and so you’ll be damaging the relevancy of your webpage if you make this choice. Website designers should advise you of this.

  • Include a CMS

Google likes fresh content. The easiest way to be able to regularly update your site is to include a CMS in your website design.

  • Have a good navigation system

Google needs to be able to crawl websites easy, and having clear navigation facilitates this process. There are other ways to increase the ease with which Google crawls your site, including creating a sitemap for the Googlebot.

  • Consider your website load speed

Google announced that website load speed affects your search engine positions, so make sure that yours loads well. Your website designer will be able to offer suggestions if you feel that there is an issue with this aspect of your site.

  • Do your keyword research before deciding your site structure

If you want to target certain keywords for optimisation after the launch of your website, you need to have relevant landing pages for them. It isn’t effective to pile a load of unrelated keywords on one page and expect to rank well for them, make sure your website design includes enough relevant pages.

  • 301 redirects

If you’re redesigning your website, 301 redirects are crucial to ensure your rankings don’t drop. Your website designer will deal with this for you.

Seo London