Have you ever invested a bunch of money into your website’s design but still ended the month with about 20 visitors? 😅 Yeah, almost every website owner can relate to that pain! So you wonder if all your effort was worth it. Why is this so?
In short, what matters most is the overall technical design and functionality of your website. That can be the make or break factor for browsers on your page. However, even though ‘good-looking’ isn’t the best criterion for your website’s ranking, it cannot be overlooked.
So, out of 50 people who visit your website today, one of them might start thinking of becoming a paying customer. Unfortunately, without an excellent-looking website, they lose trust in your company and rethink their intentions.
How Does Website Design Matter For SEO?
Without much ado, here are a few key ways your website’s design affects the ranking of your site:
1. It Makes Navigation Easy
When done correctly, website navigation (a.k.a. internal linking architecture) makes it easy for users to find stuff on your website. It’s a major component of what makes your website’s design matter for SEO.
What’s more? The search engine crawls 🐞 through faster, making you more visible on searches and consequently bringing you more conversions.
Like the table of contents for books or shelf labeling to help you around a grocery store, content categorization or hierarchy helps your visitors navigate the river of content on your page.
The ‘back-to-top’ button is crucial here. These help your page rank higher for head keywords, generally, and for long-tail keywords, specifically.
2. Improves Usability
While you have SEO in mind, you also want to make your site as user-friendly as possible. You don’t want people scratching their heads over what to do next on your website because of its seeming “complexity.” The website’s design should feel harmonious and consistent across all pages — fonts, color palette, page structure, and image presentation should all sync.
In all these, nonetheless, don’t forget your goal of making users take your desired action. So place CTA buttons and hyperlinks strategically across your page. Let interaction always lead to conversion. The website’s design is maximized for SEO that way.
3. Lowers Bounce Rate
Google notes the number of people who come to your website and return immediately to the search result page. It’s called the bounce rate. A high bounce rate can have negative implications on your SEO.
The way to avoid this is to provide valuable information or differentiating features at the start of your location page or on your website’s front page. Don’t forget that users come to your page to get information and not to admire aesthetics.
4. Finetunes Page Loading Speed
An excellently designed website won’t take more than 10 seconds to load. Google says more than half of mobile visitors won’t stay if your page takes more than three seconds to load. That wouldn’t be good for your SEO because Google’s algorithm knows what’s happening. 👮♂️
Secondly, your users get a satisfactory experience from your website. If your website loads quickly, it encourages visitors to stay and see what the page is about. Image compression and quality, file sizes, and server quality are a few factors that affect your page’s loading speed.
Does Video On Your Website Factor into SEO?
People consume content faster in video format. Website design matters for SEO, but it’s only part of an overall persuasive marketing strategy that should include videos.
And if you can get people to stay on your website for a minute and a half, seeing a video, you’re already winning!! Quickly, here are two ways video factors into your SEO:
- Google indexes sites quicker when they have videos on them. It knows you prefer videos and will work towards bringing more of them your way.
- Beyond SEO, people prefer to see your face and consume information visually through videos (true with you, I bet). Some people generally prefer videos to text. Allowing your customers to consume information in their preferred way is excellent for empathizing with them.
How To Make Killer Videos That Folks Want to Watch
With a good video that makes people stick around on your website, Google thinks, “Wow, when people click on this site (with a video), they stay. But they leave immediately when they click on this other site (without a video).” 🤔
So, it’s essential to make your video as top-notch as possible. Here are a few tips you can use:
1. Shift the Spotlight to Your Customers
Don’t spend all the time talking about yourself and your services. People care about themselves, you know. Dish out premium value — review products, answer hot or trending questions, react to ongoing issues in your industry, and so on.
2. Feel Free to Be Yourself!
Do you know that people connect more with a video that has you in an informal setting than with a formal, over-edited video? Just like Tiktok, your customers get to see you for who you are and appreciate you by choice.
3. Be Specific
As the saying goes, “Trying to please everyone is the first step to failure.” Know your audience and create specialized video content based on their liking.
If you fail to include video content and ignore these other ways to get in front of people and make your company fun and interesting, your audience only hears half of your story.
Conclusion
Some folks have said apart from optimizing an effective website, a company needs at least four other solid lead-generation strategies. And ideally, all the outlets work together to resonate your message with the world and affect the psychology of your to-be customers.
Apply what you’ve learned about marketing and sales on Google SEO to your social media platforms and vice-versa. You’ll be stunned at the chemistry that starts happening in your marketing. Make sure to provide value to your customers at all times, and you’ll no doubt win more business.
Hook Agency specializes in building user-friendly website designs for SEO, so we love talking about this, and we’d love to hear from you. Reach out today or check out other SEO articles on our blog.
