5 SEO Tips for Web Designers {Updated}

As search engine optimization is a crucial factor for the visibility and the reputation of a website, web designers need to have a basic understanding of most common SEO practices, so that they can build them into the designing process.

Websites that consider SEO principles will be more successful at attracting quality traffic and ultimately more profitable.

Scroll on for five essential tips that can lead you to a more SEO-friendly web design.

• Mobile-first indexing

As mobile accounts for approximately half of the worldwide internet traffic consistently since 2017, mobile-friendly design is not an option, it became a necessity. 

The rising importance of mobile was confirmed by Google’s Mobile-first Index in 2018, using the mobile version of the webpage for, for indexing and ranking purposes, to better help mobile users find what they’re looking for.

Mobile responsive web design is obligatory for SEO, as it improves usability. Delivering a smooth and fast user experience across various devices is a critical ranking factor for search engines.

• Understand the search intent

Keywords are a crucial part of any SEO campaign, as they reveal what audiences are searching for online. However, as exact-match keywords no longer give results, successful SEO practices combine keywords with the context and the search intent.

Internet users can visit the website with different search intent :

• Informational intent. The user is looking for specific information regarding the problem they’re having or an answer to their question. These searches can contain words such as: how to, the best way to, why, etc.
• Navigational intent. The user knows about the brand already; they want to find and browse the website. They usually search using the name of the company.
• Commercial investigation intent. The user is checking out various purchasing options and reading reviews to find the option that best matches their need. They still need to be convinced.
• Transactional intent. The user is browsing with the intent to find and make the best purchase. These queries often contain words such as deal, buy, discount, etc.

Web design for SEO should take into account these different stages of search intent, as it will affect whether the website you create will be noticed by the right audiences.

• Have a proper site structure

According to a reputable digital agency Only SEO Gold Coast, the most important keywords should be mapped to the most appropriate pages of your website so that the search engine can deliver the best answer to the user’s query. 

However, for the best results, SEO goes far beyond the content of the website and includes the website’s structure too. 

On-page SEO is one of the most important parts of SEO for web design and includes optimizing:

• Title-tags. Short, 50-60 characters descriptions, will be the first things a user will see in SERP, and decide whether the page matches their intent.
• Meta-descriptions inform your potential site visitors about your webpage in more detail, so they should be concise and well-written.
• Heading tags create a solid page structure, so they allow search engines to categorize properly and index content. Make sure you use < h1 > tag just once, for the main title, and use other headings for the proper hierarchy.
• Page content. When it comes to web design, apart from being properly optimized for keywords, page content needs to be readable and user-friendly.

• Optimizing images

It’s important to know that search engines understand images via text used to describe them. They use the image file name and the image alt text to identify what the image represents, so the image alt text should include keywords and be descriptive.

The visual content you design should be eye-catching and high-quality, but if there is any chance, they could negatively affect the website’s speed, optimize their size.

A page’s loading speed directly influences your bounce rate- 1 to 3 seconds delay has a very low bounce rate probability of only 32%, while each added second triples the bounce chances.

• Make Your Design Easy to Read

Web designers should always be aware of the impact design can have on the presentation of the content.

Even the top-notch content and the best deals won’t matter much, if the website is poorly designed, and fails to deliver the visitors what they came for. 

As a matter of fact, 94% of people say that design is the main reason why they don’t trust certain websites, while only 6% of them find the actual content having the most important impact on their opinion.

Website visitors want sites that are clean, easy to navigate, and consume, and they tend to consider these websites as more trustworthy. 

You can always perfect with a clutter-free, minimalistic design. Leaving plenty of white space will give the content room to breathe, accentuate calls-to-action, and create a sense of balance so that the visitors can focus on the things that matter the most.

Websites that are difficult to read or navigate will turn the visitors away quickly, thus increasing the bounce rate and sending signals of poor user experience to the search engines, resulting in poor ratings.

These SEO tips will help you better understand the commercial aspect of websites. By following them, you will be able to create web designs that are more appealing to both search engines and humans, and more efficient in attracting the right kind of visitors and converting them into customers.