Web Design SEO: Improve Organic Rank Through Design
Optimizing a website to align with eCommerce SEO best practices not only involves keyword research and content marketing, but it also entails updating the design and layout of web pages across an entire site. If you've experienced high bounce rates and low engagement, we encourage you to continue reading for some inspiration to get started and make changes.
Web Design SEO: Rank On SERPs With These Design Tips
Create an enjoyable user experience and help search engine crawlers better understand the content throughout the multitude of pages on your site with these three web design SEO strategies.
- Use a sitemap
- Keep visual hierarchy in mind
- Design for mobile devices
Use A Sitemap
A sitemap is the foundation of a website's content that helps both users and search engines understand a site's navigational structure. Sitemaps are a key piece in the website design process as they help create a positive experience for users, provide order to various web pages and keep content visually appealing.
In addition to improving the user experience, sitemaps are also helpful when it comes to the way search engines crawl a website. A sitemap acts as a website blueprint that helps search engines find web pages as well as indicate the most important and most relevant pages.
Keep Visual Hierarchy In Mind
Just like how humans innately read from left to right, we also read from top to bottom. Lay out your web pages so that the most important pieces of information are at the top. This is a crucial piece to any successful design strategy because it's likely you'll lose your visitors if you don't capture their attention within the first few seconds from when they land on your page.
Visual hierarchy contributes to the overall usability of a website. Don't hesitate to change the size, color, alignment or style of content on a page to make it easier for users to navigate. Also, use proper heading tags to help readers clearly (and quickly) comprehend what a page is about. For example, use an H1 tag only once, then an H2, H3, H4 and so on as needed to create a hierarchical structure.
Optimizing content and web design SEO will help increase average session duration and decrease bounce rate − both of which are important metrics that search engines consider when determining if a site is reliable and valuable to the people who land on them.
Design For Mobile Devices
Optimizing a website for mobile devices is key to driving traffic, decreasing bounce rate and winning more sales. It's true − a Google survey shows that 59% of shoppers take mobile responsiveness into consideration when deciding which brand to buy from.
When designing your eCommerce website, be sure to test the mobile design meticulously to ensure that pop-ups, lead capture forms and other elements do not diminish the quality of the user experience. A one-page checkout, top navigation menu and search bar above the fold are some great web design SEO strategies to help you improve the mobile user experience.
Although dynamic serving and separate URLs are trusted ways to optimize a website for mobile, Google recommends configuring a responsive mobile web design because a site's URLs and HTML stay the same. It's also the easiest to implement and maintain in terms of design.
Conclusion
We hope these web design SEO tips help you optimize your templates and web pages to not only enhance the user experience across all devices but also improve your site's organic search rankings. If you have any questions or want to learn how Groove Commerce's website design and eCommerce SEO services can expand your organic search presence, don't hesitate to reach out to our team through the form below. We're happy to learn more about your unique eCommerce needs and share how we can help!