Is Your Website SEO-Friendly?

Linda Layton • Jun 16, 2020

SEO. Your Website. Why It Matters.

Hey there! It's been a while! But, I didn't forget about you! I'm sure you've been anxiously awaiting the next "New York Times Best Seller-ish" writing to show up here, eh?! There has been some cuh-raaaazy stuff going on in the world since the last post, and just when you think things are calming down, something else crops up to cause a ruckus in our daily life. Ugh! Thank goodness things seem to be trying to return to normal - as I glance around looking for a UFO or asteroid to just appear from nowhere.... HA!

So. Let's get to the topic of this post, which is about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and why it's important in website design.

SEO is the "what" to the "how" on the way your website is found, listed, and prioritized on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. That means the better you follow the core SEO standards on your website, the possibilities of ranking higher (like the coveted first page) in searches are higher.

Here are several things to check off the list to make sure your website isn't getting 'ignored' by the search engine website "crawlers."

Responsive Website Design

This has become a major factor in website rankings, and Google is now giving preference to sites with responsive designs. Having a single URL (the 'www' to your site) that has responsive design for various devices (desktop/laptop/phones) reduces the load time so there is no redirection to a separate URL for each device-optimized view. *Phew! That was a lot crammed in a sentence!* So when a Googlebot crawls/reviews your site, the efficiency is greater when it can index your page once rather than different Googlebot agents trying to cover all different versions of content. **I really tried to 'de-nerd' that for easy consumption, so I hope that made some sense. I will add that it's a good thing Layton45 creates all websites with responsive design under 1 URL. *wink* **

Site Speed

Have you ever visited a website with anticipation for info to only sit there and wait a while for it come up? That site probably isn't going to rank very well in the search engines, provided the slowness isn't a result from poor internet connection or other internet-related issues. You probably also know that if a site takes a long time to load pages, then you aren't going to stick around very long to view it. It's just human internet nature. We want info, and we want it NOW. If you're curious about how your page ranks in the Google speed world, you can check it HERE . It will give you insights on what may be bogging your site's speed down, and some of those insights may sound like a foreign language, but it is helpful to share with your webmaster. ;)

Accessibility

This doesn't mean what you think it means. This has more to do with the layout of buttons and links. If certain touch elements are so close to each other that a mobile user cannot easily tap a desired element with their finger without also tapping a neighboring element, you will have a hard time getting users to stick around. Websites that are frustrating to use means that users won't stay on it long. I know that my own web surfing experiences are very much like that.

Legible Typography

Along the same lines as mobile accessibility, this is also important in SEO consideration. If your website font size is too small on the mobile layout, users will have to zoom in to view your content properly. As a designer, I can honestly say that Google has told me when a site has been flagged as having text too small. Google is aware of this, and will give a "thumbs down" to its SEO ranking. If you don't have your site linked for Google review, it won't let you know that either.

Intrusive Interstitials

Otherwise known as pages with "pop-ups." They are the pages that will have popups that come up to ask for your email or age confirmation. If they affect the accessibility of your content, they're considered intrusive interstitials. Pages with popups where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as high.

Content Keywords

Keywords are important to have in the actual content/text of your website. Your text should be rich with keywords that users may be searching for in your line of business. Keywords aren't being considered for indexing in the backend code of websites anymore, so we can't rely on that to be a good way for websites to be ranked.

Search engines sure are picky, and super smart! It's almost a full-time job to keep up on the in's and out's of current SEO practices, but having the basics helps quite a bit. If you are curious about how to spruce up your site for better SEO rankings, please feel free to contact us to see what we can do to help!

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