Web Design, UX, and SEO Best Practices: The Perfect Balance
Web design is full of misconceptions. One of the biggest is that all you need is someone who writes code, and a website can be thrown together for you in a week, ready to be perched at the top of Google’s search results.
Visiting websites designed in this way is kind of like watching a one-man band — though it’s interesting to see someone play U2’s “Beautiful Day” on tin cans, it’s not going to sound that great. And in the end, they’re not going to be standing on stage in front of thousands.
Our Philosophy on Design, UX, and SEO Best Practices
There aren’t quick SEO tricks. It’s all about having quality content on a site with a great user experience and making sure it’s optimized for search engine visibility.
Our philosophy is simple:
Great Experience (UX and Visual Design) + Quality Content + Search Engine Optimized Code Structure = Best Practices for Great SEO. No magic and no tricks.
Let’s explore these elements.
Quality Content (Design)
It sounds simple, but you need to create great content. Create the content you’d want to consume. Make sure it’s unique, well-crafted, and engaging.
Your brand should shine through. Engage potential customers and draw them into your story. Well-written content communicates clearly and provides examples that help your customers visualize themselves using your product or enjoying your service.
Great Experience (UX)
You might be thinking, “Why would experience design affect search engine visibility?”
Without getting into all the complexities of search engine algorithms, it’s important to understand a simple truth. Search engines have one goal: to present high-quality results that are most relevant to a user’s search. And they’re continually getting better at identifying poorly designed experiences.
Having great UX and visual design ensures that when users land on your site, they’ll find what they’re looking for, ultimately leading to a better search engine ranking.
Optimized Code (SEO)
You’ve designed a great experience and created quality content, but you still need to make sure it’s structured in a way that’s easily readable for search engines. Here’s where the “optimization” comes into play.
Search engines have structural guidelines. Follow them, and your site will look great — not only to users but to the search engines. There are a few tips and tricks in there, but they should all be aboveboard.
The challenge is that everything’s evolving rapidly. What you need is a well-experienced development team who knows what they’re doing and who uses the latest standards and best practices in this fast-changing industry.
Other Tips
White Hat SEO Only
You may remember this phrase from the early 2000s. It’s still important to mention, and it’s even more important today. Playing by the rules is key.
Flash — Don’t Use It
It’s not easily indexable by search engines and not accessible by all devices.
Customer-Focused Thinking
Everything we’ve discussed is completely focused around the customer. Put them first, and you’ll win.
Define Your Audience
In order to put the customer first, you need to know who your customer is, where they are, and how they behave.
Web Design, UX, and SEO Best Practices: Final Thoughts
To achieve the best results, you have to be able to balance good SEO practices, gorgeous web design, and well-written content, all while keeping the customer experience in mind.
A website that engages your audience isn’t reliant on SEO, back-end design, code, graphic design, or writing — it depends on all those elements working together. It’s a full orchestra, not a one-man band.
Balance is the key to success. Take a look at your ecommerce presence and ask yourself: Is one of these areas in need of your attention? Do you need to boost the focus on UX, develop sharper web design, or utilize SEO according to the best practices we discussed?
Contact us today, and our experts can help you get started right where you are.
