Why Website Design Is Important For SEO

If you are under the impression that website design and search engine optimization (SEO) are two independent activities, then it is not correct.

As a business owner, you must understand that both are related and any failure in recognizing the fact could adversely affect your business.

Aesthetics should be considered when designing your website, but it important to keep in mind the fact that website design encompasses much more than that.

It has the potential to impact everything from SEO and number of visitors to conversion rates and branding.

Good Website Design Is Important

The result of a study to determine whether the content factors and different design elements had an influence on the trust of visitors coming to the websites showed that website design is more important than content.

When the people who participated in the survey were asked as to why they mistrusted websites, the comments of 94 percent of the participants towards the website design elements. Only 6 percent of them made any reference to specific content.

Content Is Important

Website design might be very important, but content relevance and quality continue to be vital. When the participants of the abovementioned survey were asked as to why they trusted a particular website, the answers given by 83 percent of them revealed that content did have a key role to play.

People like websites that are informative, relevant, clear, unbiased, and fresh. Further, they like websites much better when age-specific information is given and answers to questions that come up often are provided.

Fonts and other typographic elements are also important, but the focus should be on delivering more accurate messages to your audience.

Anyway, overdoing these elements may not do any kind of additional good to your website. Too much content can mess up your web pages and affect the conversion rates.

Website Design Has Far-Reaching Effects

Both website design and content are important and they go hand-in-hand. However, it is the quality of design that attracts visitors to your website and makes them spend time and read the content you have provides.

According to website design and internet marketing experts, it is important to design your website, keeping the needs of your entire business in view. Or else, you will find it difficult to compete in the market.

Therefore, when you design your site to make it attractive to the visitors, it should also be kept in mind that it has the potential impact the other areas of your business.

Relationship Between Website Design and SEO

When creating your website, keeping SEO in mind, it is important that you think long term. Design trends keep changing, but the presence of your brand has to last for a much longer time.

Therefore, it is not wise to focus too much on the trends. It can cause problems for you. However, you should not completely neglect the prevailing styles.

To give you an example, a trending design style may be very attractive. Users may like the design because of the convenience the style provides. As a website owner, you may like to use the style because it keeps the users engaged.

However, what is more important is to determine whether the search engines like the trending style or not. As you remove the website structure that the search engines are traditionally used to crawling, you might be inviting problems for yourself.

On the other hand, you may really want to embrace the trending responsive designs for websites. This is because, in the near future, Internet searches are likely to be done more on smartphones rather than desktops and laptops.

There is a tremendous increase in the number of smartphone users around the world. Further, the search engines have started rewarding websites that invest in creating responsive web pages.

In addition to eliminating the need to run two separate websites and the risk of paying penalties for providing duplicate content, it helps you to greatly bring down the bounce rates.

The examples given above give you a fair idea as to why it is important to connect website design and SEO. However, there are a few other factors that need to be kept in mind when designing your website.

Website Design and Branding

You need to make a distinction between website design and branding. The design of your website cannot be considered as your brand at all.

Of course, it is a brand element that can help you to build trust among your target audience. Branding is actually an investment. It grows over time and makes people say that they have trust in your products and services.

Brands are perceptions and the elements of branding such as logos, trademarks, names, taglines, and packaging, are the shortcuts to reach those perceptions.

Typically, consumers tend to lean towards trusted brands. They will buy products and services when they are able to correlate with a strong brand.

As such, from the website design perspective, it is very clear that the elements of design you choose will have a direct impact on your overall branding strategy as well as market position.

Website Design and Conversion Rates

Website design also affects the conversion rates, particularly with respect to the elements listed below:

1. Navigation

It is very easy to understand as to how accessibility and navigation are related to the conversion rates. If your web site’s design is such that it presents challenges to the visitors, then they are likely to lose interest quickly.

On the other hand, an intuitive website structure will encourage users to remain on your site and continue browsing. Navigation assumes a lot of importance when there are several pages on your website.

Therefore, you need to include a menu that clearly shows the list of web pages or a well-labelled navigation bar. A well-developed navigation plan enables users to not only explore but also understand your website much better.

You are not required to use state-of-the-art typefaces at all. A simple and intuitive navigation arrangement makes visitors come back to your website again and again.

2. Words Used

According to experts, the words that you use in your calls-to-action statements have the potential to directly impact the conversion rates. For example, incorporating the word ‘Free’ when requesting visitors to either download something or sign up on your site often tends to increase conversions by about 4.2 perc3ent.

3. Colour

Colours do have a role to play in improving conversions. Research studies show that big, bold red colour is best suited for headlines. Navy blue colour helps to improve the feeling of trustworthiness when you use it in your call-to-action buttons.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important that you have a clear understanding of the impact of your website’s design on SEO. It is just not a simple matter of preference or making a minor choice. Your website’s design has the potential to make or break your online business.

It has to actually make a difference as to how your target audience perceives your business or brand and the visitors to your website need to be converted into your customers.

All said and done, using a design that provides an impressive and easy to navigate user interface will go a long way in enhancing your conversion rates, contributing to improving the bottom line of your business.

In today’s digital world, more and more businesses have started developing responsive websites to stay ahead of their competitors. So, the earlier you act the better for you.

8 Types of Digital Content Created by Content Marketing Agencies

Your blogs might have been to be a hit among the audience in the past with lots of user traffic, visitors etc. But then, the pace remained the same forever or a bit slower with visitors leaving your site on a daily basis.

What could have gone wrong? Of course! They got bored of the same type of content you kept on giving them.

Being creative is now the only way for your content to get notified. Try a different type of digital content and there, you’ll get to see your site buzzing with visitors.

However, it shouldn’t stop here. Keep trying different types of content from time to time to help your business thrive.

Here’s a list of different types of digital content created by content creation agencies, for you to choose from:

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Long form blogs

So, what are long form blogs?  Some claim that those blogs with a word count of may be 1500 words while some say that long-form blogs are those with a word count of about 3500 words.

Whatever, the truth is, the idea is to create an article that goes on until you get tired of scrolling. Long form content has always been there; but, it started getting noticed only by 2013-2014.

It has now become the most popular style among bloggers. Long form blogs have become much popular these days because:

Google said it: According to Google, longer content contain more information and therefore, helps solve many queries of the audience at once. Also, some SEO experts suggest that long form blogs rank better in Google search results.

Popular bloggers said it: Bloggers, big and small, have been suggesting for a while that long form blogs are important.

Short form blogs

Short form blogs are those with maximum word count of 1000 words. The fact that short form blogs have lesser word count, that may go down to 250 words or lesser, can make it less popular in SEO.

Therefore, it’s important the blogs being short, should also be precise and unique. The content should be good enough for the audience to stop and take notice.

Videos

Digital content in the form of video gives you a large variety of choices. Regardless of the type it is, a good video always remains etched to the audience’s memory.

If a video is done well, it can be extremely compelling. The duration of the video depends on your requirements (it can be educational, business, marketing). You can check out this blog for using video in your marketing or promotional campaign.

Podcasts

Podcasts are digital audio files that are used to share information through computers or any portable music devices such as MP3 players or iPods.

Businesses usually use podcasts to share information regarding their new products, about the company or about the general happenings in the industry.

Podcasts provide an insight to the audience about how much a business knows about the industry, thus helping to build trust among them. Also, the audience feel directly connected to the business as they get to hear the voice of the presenter.

Podcasts are affordable compared to other marketing technique as the location of creating podcasts do not matter, be it an office or home.

All it needs is a computer, a microphone and software to edit the recordings. Remember, regular podcasts can help your business in attracting your target audience, thus helping to build brand awareness.  You can even publish the podcast transcript, thus, adding to the SEO value.

 

Social media content

Majority of people around the globe use various social media platforms due to which they have found a place in the marketing strategy.

You may not find another medium to reach your content to the audience  in a short span of time and the benefit is that, you get to connect directly with your potential customers.

Remember, your content must say more about your brand while keeping the audience interested. Keep reminding them about what you offer. After about five to six exposure, the audience will surely feel compelled to go for your products.

Copywriting

Copywriting is the process of writing advertising materials such as blogs, newsletters, marketing campaigns etc. The words should be persuasive enough for the audience to take an action, thus driving traffic to your business website. Effective copywriting includes:

  • Attention grabbing headlines that compel the audience to click the link to read further
  • Content that provides just the information that the reader needs
  • Interesting content that helps the audience to easily connect with your business, while building trust and brand recognition
  • Content that tells the audience what to do next, such as signing up for newsletters, click a link to visit a website, social media page etc.

You can implement your own copywriting strategy for promoting your products and services to the right audience. You can use Definitive Guide to Copywriting by Quicksprout as your reference material.

Infographics

Infographics refers to the visual representation of information. The fact that visuals tend to stay in people’s minds than text works in favour of infographics.

As a result, infographics is the most shared content compared to other digital content types. Infographics can include anything such as general information, data, statistics etc.

Almost everyone is making infographics these days and therefore, it is important to be creative with your infographics for audience to take notice.

You can also create gifographic, which is a type of infographic, but contains animated GIF images instead of static images like in normal infographics.

E-books

E-books consist of large content of a minimum word count of 10,000 words, in PDF format and are downloadable. An e-book gives an insight of your knowledge about an industry and is the most effective way of sharing your knowledge with others.

While creating an e-book, make sure that the content is divided into topics making it easier for the users to read. Remember, your e-book’s title plays an important role in the audiences’ decision regarding downloading your e-book. Therefore, make sure that the title is catchy and relevant.

An e-book with just texts is usually considered not worth reading. Therefore, try to include graphics and make sure that the e-book’s content is formatted well to grab attention.

It is always best to create both PDF and HTML versions of your e-book. You can add video and audio to the HTML version.

Conclusion

Rather than using one type of digital content for all of your marketing campaigns, you can use different types as mentioned earlier.

These days, content marketing agencies try to experiment with their content with the aim of attracting target audience, increase engagement, and share to others.