Most customers ask web designers to improve site indexing by search engines in order to attract more visitors. Some designers and studios offer separate services for website promotion in search engines (SEO), while others do not want to do anything for SEO. Most customers who want to promote their website in search engines know very little about the methods of promotion, and what is required for a website to appear in the first positions of search engine output, at the request of highly competitive keywords.
Considering that Web design and SEO are closely related to each other, this topic can be called “Frequently Asked Questions” for designers, but often there are not clear points related to the responsibility of the web designer and his ability to improve SEO . Most of the customers from the designer require the creation of a well-indexed site that would attract the target audience, however, SEO is a continuous process that includes not only the design and code of the site. Such moments as: keyword analysis, content development, linking and many others are certainly critical moments in website optimization for search engines and, as a rule, they represent a continuous process.
Despite the fact that a web designer can lay the foundation for website optimization, SEO includes much more than just web design. If a web designer manages to develop a search engine open site, any subsequent actions to optimize it will have a much stronger effect. In my opinion, web design and SEO are completely different services, and one web designer cannot develop a website completely optimized for search engines without having knowledge of other components of this puzzle. Ideally, the designer should create a site open to search engines and advise the customer on the further stages of working on the site for its effective optimization (such as developing content and creating a system of links).
')
In this article, we will conduct a detailed analysis of the theme "Web designers and SEO." Many other SEO related topics will also be covered.
Responsibility of the designer in relation to SEO
As noted in the introduction, the task of the web designer is to create a website that is open to search engines and to lay the foundation for further optimization steps. What does openness for search engines mean? The essence of this concept lies in the fact that the design and code of the site have a great influence on the results of site issuance in search engines. The site open to the search engine greatly simplifies the process of finding information by it, determines what is said on the site and specific pages, allows the site, based on the content, to take the highest possible position in the results of search engines. However, sites open to search engines need much more work to be considered fully optimized. For a detailed review on what makes a site open to search engines, you can read the article “
Creating Search Engine Open Sites ” on Cape Cod SEO. Some points will be discussed later in this article.
In addition to creating a site open to search engines, the web designer should discuss the topic of how a site is retrieved by search engines with the customer, explain what needs to be done further to optimize the site, as well as find out which search keywords and phrases the client really needs in order to attract the right target. audience. In some cases, the client will already have selected ready-made keywords and queries, but some may not even have an idea of ​​what it is.
Why is SEO important to designers?
If web design and SEO really are two completely different services, why should designers think about SEO? To begin with, some designers and studios provide both services. In such cases, of course, the work of web designers and SEO-specialists one way or another intersects.
Customers often hire web designers who do not provide SEO services. Despite the fact that the main criteria of a client when evaluating a web designer are the visual component of the site on which he works and aesthetics, the business itself expects another from the site: it expects a powerful impetus to development. If the site is engaged in electronic commerce - it needs to increase sales. If this is a blog - it needs more traffic, subscribers, discussions in the comments. If this is a website for a service-oriented business, it needs more hits, and the largest influx of users generated by the site’s work.
If a web designer wants his clients to be happy and wants to be approached further, he should be interested in achieving the business goals of the site as well as in its visual appeal. Traffic attracted to the site from search engines helps to achieve the desired business goals, no matter what type of site is developed.
Considering that search engine traffic is one of the key conditions for business success, the web designer should be well versed in the subject of developing search engine open sites, giving each site the opportunity to have a good place in search engine results.
SEO restrictions for the designer
Despite the fact that the design and development process of the site is an important part in setting the foundation for search engine optimization, the web designer’s capabilities are rather limited. Provided that the designer does not provide services for the development of content, linking pages of the site and social media marketing, the chances for the site to come out (only the designer and developer worked on) to high search positions in search engines for high-frequency queries are extremely small. If a site in the past has already settled well in its niche and has a number of trust external links, its chances of a good position in issuing are greatly increased, otherwise, the creation of a site open to search engines is only the beginning of an optimization path.
Customers very often ask web designers to create an optimized website that would be in the first positions of search results for given target requests. Unfortunately, the designer does not have a magic wand, by waving which the site would hit the top without any effort. The design and code of the site are just one piece of a large puzzle. Web designers need to teach customers the basics of SEO and the next steps they need to take in the way of their website to the top. They can also help the customer in choosing low-frequency queries that can lead the site to good issuing positions, based only on the openness of the site to search engines and basic work with content.
Web designers should not
Given that the design and code of the site is a good foundation for SEO, it is very important to do everything correctly at these stages, but it is equally important not to do anything that could make the foundation unstable in the future. Black SEO (everything that tries to deceive the results of issuance and violates
Google guidelines ) can help the customer to achieve better positions in the results of issuance in the short term, but is more likely to cause serious damage to the site in the future. All web designers should have a basic understanding of SEO, and that in the future it can cause potential damage to the site customers in search results, to avoid it.
Among other things, designers should avoid promises to the customer like the following: "I can make a website for you, which will be displayed on the first page of Google search results on such a key request." In particular, if the designer provides services only for the design and development of the site, without touching on SEO services, then there are not so many ways at his disposal that he could use to keep such a promise to the customer. If a client asks to develop a website that will have to reach a certain place in the search results, it is best to explain in detail to him what is involved in the site optimization process, offer his assistance on the services that you can provide and recommend a specialist implementing all other SEO services which you cannot implement.
Effective SEO for web designers
Now that we’ve figured out the role of the web designer in the SEO process, and why search traffic is so important, it’s time to look at some specific things that web designers can accomplish when creating websites that are open to search engines. Considering the objectives of this article, we refer to web design, describing the front end development (HTML / CSS development) and the visual component of the design.
1. Carefully discuss the topic of search engine optimization site with customers, helping them identify the right keywords
Before starting any project it is very useful to discuss the topic of search engine optimization with the customer. This is useful for several reasons: 1) If the client has inadequate expectations from the web designer regarding the issue of bringing the site to the top issuing position, it will be useful to tell him about the basics of SEO and the role of the web designer in this process; 2) The web designer and the client should work closely together, defining targeted key requests, and how the site should be optimized. Customers always know much more information about their business and their customers than the designer — this is why it is very important to involve them in the process of defining search queries.
2. Work on keywords
If the client has not determined (or is not sure of the correctness of the choice) which keywords and inquiries will be targeted, the web designer can implement some actions, finding out which phrases are mainly used by people who are looking for information on this topic, what other keywords and inquiries can be used, and how great competition. There are a whole host of services and software for selecting keywords, but the
Google AdWords Keyword Tool free service is quite sufficient for the initial analysis of key queries. Using this service, you can enter the words or phrases you are interested in, get information about the number of search queries per month made using these keywords, evaluate the level of competition in this niche for AdWords, get a list of recommended and possible key phrases.
Even if the client has already decided on the exact keywords that he wants to use, the web designer will not hurt to do a little analysis on the possible use of key queries. Perhaps other keywords and phrases that were not selected by the client, but which are the best in terms of requests or competition, will be found. Among other things, if a client chooses his keywords without using any analysis, it will be very useful to show him a comparative analysis of the levels of competition for his chosen keywords and for other similar phrases.
3. Discuss the titles of the pages with the client to optimize them.
One of the most important moments on the SEO website page is its name. Ideally, the page titles should contain keywords and phrases in order to realize the maximum match when searching by the appropriate keywords. The titles may contain any other text, but the key phrase must be present. Naturally, each page of the site should have its own name, which can be used to include different key phrases. For example, the photographer’s home page may have the title “Photographer from Philadelphia”, and secondary pages may concentrate their titles on other (but similar) keywords: “Wedding photographer from Philadelphia” or “Photographer of landscapes from Philadelphia”.
Considering that page names are so important for a good position of a site in search results, web designers should carefully discuss them with customers, using keyword analysis to help with correct names. For customers using WordPress, designers can install the “
All in One SEO Pack ” extension, which allows users to set titles for any pages and posts on the site.
4. Clean code
One of the requirements for an open search engine site is clean code, which makes it easier for search engines to index pages. If search engines spend too much time indexing a page, you can hardly expect a good position in search results (you can see examples of beautiful code in the article “
How beautiful HTML code should look like ,” on the CSS Tricks site). The CSS-based page layout makes the HTML code much cleaner, separating the page content from the markup, which is not the case with table layouts.
5. Place important information as high as possible.
The main information on the page should be located as high as possible in the HTML code of the page. Usually, the first page in the HTML code of the page is the information located in the header. It is important to make sure that the main information is located above the information that goes in the sidebar. Even if the page sidebar is to the left of the main information (for example, a column with vertical navigation (30%) and a column with site content (70%) * comment of the translator), it is necessary to make the main information in the HTML code of the page above, than sidebar code, which is easy to implement with CSS. The location of the main information in the upper part of the page code leads to a significant increase in the speed of its finding by search engines and to reduce the time spent on its recognition.
6. Use HTML headings and subheadings appropriately.
HTML title tags (such as h1, h2, h3, etc.) should be used to define the headings and subheadings of the page. Despite the fact that a similar type of title can be given to the text using various parameters and tags (font-weight, style, size, etc.) without using title tags, they are very important for search engines, since they indicate the importance of information and determine the structure of the page. Header tags help to understand what the page emphasis is on, both to search engines and web designers - by providing the ability to highlight a key phrase.
7. Use internal links to help visitors and search engines find important information.
The whole article talked about linking information on the site, as an important component of SEO. Creating links from various network trust resources to the pages of your site (or client site) is one of the decisive criteria for a site’s good position in search results, but internal links (links from one page of the site to another) are just as important. In general, search engines assume that the pages referenced by the largest number of internal links are the most important. For example, if each page of a site has a link to a page with a description of a product, it would be logical to assume that the page with a description of a product is quite important for the site.
The use of internal links facilitates the work of search engines when indexing a site and searching information / pages, besides, a well-designed internal linking will make the site as simple and accessible to users as possible, which is much more important than the position of the site in search results.
8. Use the correct text for references.
The link text (clickable text area of ​​any link) is very important for the issuance of search engines, whether external or internal link. In this article, we are only talking about internal links, because only their web designer can clearly control. Ideally, the link text should match the key phrases, or at least contain them in the text.
The use of keywords and phrases in the text of the link allows search engines to determine the theme of the page to which the link refers. For optimization purposes, the use of text with keywords is recommended instead of “click here” text.
9. Installing a site map
There are two types of site maps, each of which has its own purpose. XML or Google maps are not intended to be used by site visitors, they exist to help search engines find all the important information on the site. An XML sitemap makes it easy for the search engine to index it, and also significantly reduces the chance of a page being skipped during this process. WordPress-based sites can use the
Google XML Sitemap extension to automate the process. For all other sites, you can use a tool like "
XML-Sitemaps ".
As for HTML site maps, as a rule, they are used by site visitors to find this or that information. However, this type of card is just as important for SEO. Despite the fact that HTML maps are intended only for users, they provide an opportunity to use internal links that link to the most important pages of the site. When search engines find a sitemap, they easily index the entire site, and the links inside the card help them determine the importance of a particular page (especially for large sites that do not include an internal link to each page).
10. Use human-readable URLs (NC)
Page URLs may have some influence on the site’s position in search results, therefore, it’s best to use keywords or phrases in them. An ideal URL contains important words or phrases that tell both users and search engines about the content of the page. Too long URLs make it difficult for users to copy and paste, send via E-MAIL, write and remember. Search engines also prefer short URLs.
A hyphen or underscore is often used as a word delimiter in URLs. They can greatly facilitate the process of reading URLs and defining keywords, both for users and search engines. Most content management systems have a mechanism for controlling and creating CNC.
11. Use Alt text with images.
Images and photographs used on the page must necessarily include alt text describing the images. The main purpose of the alt text is for two purposes: accessibility and usability. For example, alt text uses different screen readers for users with problem health. With the correct alt text, you can find out what this or that image represents, without even seeing it. For SEO purposes, you can use keywords and phrases as alt text - this will give a slight advantage in search results. Alt text should not be used only for SEO purposes, but it will not be superfluous to use keywords or phrases in it where possible.
12. Redirection 301
Search engines look at
example.com and
www.example.com as two different pages (one with www, the second without). The 301 redirection is very useful, as it indicates to search engines which version of the page is preferred, and also saves the search engines from having to view them as two different pages. Without redirecting 301 position of the site in search results can be significantly affected. This redirection can be set in the .htaccess file. For more information on this topic, read the article “
301 Redirects and www / non-www Canonical Problems ”.
13. Minimizing page load time
Page load time is very important for site users. In addition, in recent months, Google has begun to emphasize that the load time will significantly affect the results of search results. Minimizing page load time is a topic, the disclosure of which can take a separate article (read the article “
How to minimize load time for users ”), but we will focus on only a few basic points. Objects such as: images, audio and video, database queries - increase the page load time. In general, the speed of connection to the Internet for most users has increased significantly in recent years, therefore, heavier pages and slower loading of pages are not so annoying for most users. However, it is still very useful to optimize files and use tools such as “
Y Slow ” to determine what else can be optimized.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that design is only a small part of the SEO process, there are a number of factors that a designer can and should take into account when creating a website that is open to search engines. In situations where the customer has an overestimated expectation of the web designer's capabilities in the SEO process, without developing a system of linking pages, adding optimized information, etc., the designer must engage in dialogue with him. The designer should explain the main factors affecting the position of the site in the search results and tell what needs to be done in order for the site to be in the top for the selected keywords in a competitive environment.