SEO Factors to Consider When Designing Your Website

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There are many SEO factors to consider when designing your website. How do you learn what are the important factors in web design? What helps your website rank on search engine result pages (SERPs)?

What Do You Look for in a Website?

Make your website easy to use

The best way to start the journey of building a website is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. When you browse the web while watching Netflix or search for the best cupcake in town, what do you look for in a website? Think about the things you want to see when you are online. Visit a few websites and see what frustrates you and what makes a site easy to use. These are the things to consider when designing a website.

When people visit a website, there are a few key elements that need to be easy to find. Is your phone number easy to find? You want to make sure website visitors see your contact information on each page, preferably at the top of your web pages. If it feels like a wild goose chase to find contact information for your company, visitors to your website will move on to the next search result.

Things to Consider When Designing a Website

Your website’s layout should be clean and easy to navigate by both humans and search engine bots. You also want to make sure you are building your website using clean code that is SEO-friendly. What counts as SEO-friendly code? Search Engine Land gives some great tips on how to make code SEO-friendly on your website.

As you build web pages on your small business website, make sure to include meta descriptions. These show up with the name of a web page when people search online. Use those 160 characters to make potential customers and clients want to click on your web page!

Website Sitemap Design

Have you thought about your website sitemap design? It is beneficial to build your sitemap before you complete a full website build. Why is your website’s sitemap design important for SEO? Your sitemap helps search engines like Google to find your website’s pages.

Remember, Google ranks pages of your website separately. While the home page may be the page you want to show up first on Google, each page of your website gives you a chance to pop up on SERPs for a target keyword. A well-constructed sitemap also helps you avoid creating duplicate content for which you could be penalized.

XML Sitemaps

These sitemaps help search engine bots crawl your website and index your content accurately. You want the Google bots to easily identify and index content on your website. With an XML sitemap, you can tell search engine bots which web pages are most important so they focus on those pages. You can also get bot activity from Google Webmaster Central.

Include an XML sitemap as you develop your website to improve your SEO efforts. Verify your XML sitemap with Google Webmaster Tool to make sure everything is in working order. Are you a one-man company? Use an XML Sitemap Generator!

Mobile Usability

things to consider when designing a website

Your website must work on mobile devices

What are some other SEO factors to consider when designing your website? We have touched on this a little bit already, but we cannot emphasize enough just how important your website’s mobile usability is for SEO. Most online searches originate on mobile devices. Google wants to know that your website provides good quality content on mobile devices as well as desktops and laptops.

Since the recent development of Google’s Mobile First Index, the mobile-friendliness of your website has become a huge priority. Nearly 95% people with mobile devices use these devices to search for local products and services. If your website is not mobile-friendly, it will not show up in SERPs when people search from their iPhone or Android device. Think of all the potential customers you are missing if you don’t make your site mobile-friendly!

Company Name

Have you already chosen your company name and website domain? If not, this information can be valuable to you and your startup. You want your company name and website domain to be easy to spell — by that, we mean it should be tough to misspell it — because this will make optimization easier. It already takes time and money to get people to find your company on search engines. Don’t make your job harder by having a complicated company name.

Resist the urge to put punctuation marks in the middle of your company name. Punctuation signals to search engines that you have moved onto a new sentence. If half of your company name is after some sort of full-stop punctuation, Google will only recognize the first half of your company name. Here is an example: Bob wants to open an art studio called “Imagine! Creative Studios.” Google will see “Imagine” and “Creative Studios” as two separate pieces, making it nearly impossible to rank for your own company name. We’re not going to tell you it is impossible, but it is exponentially more difficult than getting Google to recognize “Imagine Creative Studios.”

MarkUBiz, A Reno Web Design Company

Not sure where to start? MarkUBiz has an expert team to help you with website development and search engine optimization. Already have a website but not seeing results? There are other online marketing services that can improve your web presence, and Reno’s digital marketing firm can improve your web presence with these services.

MarkUBiz offers Website Development and Mobile Website Development services for companies in desperate need of a website upgrade. Our team builds websites that are up to the standards of current web practices. We also fully optimize your site to make sure your company’s website is recognized by search engines. Our Ultimate Web Fitness Program includes website hosting, updates to your website and website platform, and access to our expert team. Our Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Program can help you increase visibility, engagement, and leads on your site.

Wherever your company is in the world of online marketing, our team can help you understand what to do next to get the most out of your investment. Your web presence is crucial to your company’s success, now more than ever. Contact us for a free web presence review!