SEO and Web Design

Search Engine Optimization is a crucial aspect of modern web design. While SEO once revolved around keyword stuffing, repeating a specific term as many times as possible on a webpage, regardless of how this affected the quality of the overall content. Today however, search engines have gotten a lot smarter about sniffing out such behavior and adjusting their search results accordingly. The algorithms and techniques employed by Google and others have become much more sophisticated and continue to do so as time goes on. This means that web designers have had to up their game and ensure that they follow the best practices when it comes to implementing SEO.

A responsive website is one that adapts to fit the device that it is being viewed on, this is a consideration that has become much more important now that many users are viewing websites on cell phones and tablets, devices which until recently didn’t exist. Web designers used to have to create two different versions of their website, one for desktop and one for mobile, but this hampers SEO efforts by requiring two external links to your website rather than just one. Instead, web designers should make use of advances in HTML to create dynamic webpages that can resize and reorganize themselves in order to display correctly.

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and has introduced a number of changes that are of great interest to web designers looking to up their game. Among other things, HTML5 offers an easier to use, cleaner markup language which makes source code much easier to navigate. This is especially helpful if there are multiple individuals working on a website. HTML5 also sees the internet take the last step away from Flash, the plugin which has been used to display multimedia content on websites for many years, as HTML5 allows video and other media to be directly embedded into websites without the need for any external plugins.

If your website is difficult or awkward to navigate then it is more likely that users will very quickly click away; remember that using SEO to appear high in search results will only work for so long. Google and other search engine providers have built in a decay component to their search algorithms meaning that the ‘quality’ of external links to your website start being worth less over time. In order to keep your site hovering near the top of search results, you need to continue to encourage other websites to link to yours.

There is now an entire industry built around providing SEO. Some businesses offer a general service which will use a number of white-hat methods to raise your websites profile. Others, like Tim B Design, offer a specialized service for specific types of websites or businesses.

SEO is a critical component of current website design. Without being visible in search results driving traffic to a website is difficult and, more importantly, much more expensive. Compared to other forms of advertising, SEO represents the best ROI for website owners.