SEO Web Design Boosts Organic Traffic
The whole point of a website is to drive visitors… At least for most companies. SEO is the backbone of your website’s ability to drive traffic. If you’re not optimizing your web design for SEO, you’re missing massive opportunities for growth.
Things like content, keyword strategy, and traffic quality are some important aspects in SEO web design. Let’s break down some SEO strategies that can increase traffic:
Keyword Strategy
No web design process is complete without an optimized keyword strategy. Using the right keywords on pages can significantly help them rank. Studies show keyword placement is one of the most important ranking factors.
For instance, let’s say you’re trying to rank for the query “email deliverability test”. An optimized page design should use target keywords at the top of the page, headings, the URLs, meta descriptions, and other areas.
This top-ranking page shown above is a great example. Without proper keyword usage, the page would probably never rank.
Targeted Audience
With SEO strategies you can target a hyper-specific audience. This allows you to pinpoint businesses or individuals who’d be ideal customers. Ranking for keywords your target audience is interested in attracts them. So, you can completely control the quality of traffic your site gets with SEO.
Content
Create high-quality content that’s easy for search engines to categorize. Blog posts, landing pages, and other web pages can use SEO strategies to grow traffic.
SEO Web Design Improves User Experience
Another reason SEO is important in web design is it improves user experience. UX and SEO go hand in hand. Here’s how SEO can enhance user experience:
Mobile Friendliness
One of Google priorities when ranking, indexing, and crawling pages is mobile friendliness. Smartphone visits are very common—over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile users.
Mobile-friendly sites drive more traffic on average, and it’s a crucial ranking factor. Although most modern CMS templates will handle mobile experiences adequately, minor tweaks may be needed.
Mobile-optimized indexing should consist of a responsive design and duplicate content across mobile and desktop. No SEO web design process is complete without mobile friendliness.
Page Load Speed
The Google algorithm rewards websites that load quickly. Plus, we live in an era where attention spans are at an all-time low. This is especially true when it comes to people searching the web. Who wants to stay on a laggy site that takes forever to load?
If your page speed takes more than a few seconds, most readers will leave. This has a direct effect on traffic, bounce rate, dwell time, and other web analytics.
Also, some of Google’s main metrics for Core Web Vitals are based on loading and interactivity. Your site’s leverage for driving traffic is affected by these.
Google’s Core Web Vitals
Quality SEO web design should be optimized for Google’s Core Web Vitals. These are basically Google’s standards for user experience. They consist of Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction To Next Paint (INP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Website Aesthetics
A website’s aesthetics and SEO are closely related. Highly aesthetic web designs can increase things like user time on page, returning traffic, and more. Although it’s a bit harder to track data about aesthetics, there’s still plenty of concrete data.
Functionality and aesthetics are the two main parts that make up website aesthetics. The “aesthetic” part focuses on color schemes, whitespace, and layout. The “functionality” part focuses on Core Web Vitals, font, contrast, size, navigation, links, and readability.
Readability
Readability is essential for SEO web design. Sentence length, whitespace (space between words and lines), heading structure, etc all impact rankings. A website’s text should be as easy to read as possible.
Readability is one of the more basic aspects of quality web design and blog layout. In the last few years, good readability has become a more of a priority and trend in web designs.
SEO tactics consider all of these. These things can all improve traffic if executed the right way.
Drive More Conversions with SEO Web Design
Website traffic leads to conversions. This means the more traffic your website gets, the more potential you’ll get for driving conversions. Whether it’s a simple email capture or actually making a sale, you need traffic to convert users. Let’s go deeper on some key aspects of SEO conversions:
CTAs
SEO and CRO tactics use captivating call-to-actions throughout a website. CTAs are the backbone of getting conversions. Not all CTAs are created equal—the most effective CTAs are positioned in the right place at the right time.
Take Semrush for example. Their blogs often have a “sticky” CTA. This feature sticks to the side of the page as readers scroll. On average, these “sticky” buttons have higher conversions than ones that don’t stick.
Plus, the call-to-action is highly relevant to readers. This also improves conversion rates. In this case, their readers want to learn about keyword research. So it makes sense to include this CTA that’s relevant to the post’s topic.
Once this button is clicked, it takes users to a page where they can enter their information. Quality SEO will typically include CTA strategies that convert well.
Maximize Your Marketing Strategy with SEO
There are 5.9 million searches every minute, and the top-ranking pages receive a 22.4% click through rate. It’s no surprise that companies spend over $79 billion annually on SEO… It’s a valuable part of marketing.
No digital marketing strategy is complete without SEO. Blog posts, landing pages, and other web pages can be tremendously effective to growing sales. Here’s how SEO strategies improve marketing:
BOFU Blog Content
Certain types of blog posts can lead to tons of sales. Comparative lists/category roundups, versus posts, case studies, and other content types are great at this.
For example, this comparative list ranks for the query “best ai tools for students”. Their post compares 10 AI tools, with the first option being their own company, ClickUp. The page also gets over 1,000 monthly visits, which likely results in countless signups.
The reason these types of posts convert so well is simple—commercial intent. This means most people who search this keyword are looking to make a purchase.
The majority of searchers are “warm leads”, and can be converted easily after some comparisons. Although these types of posts promote their competitors, they’re still well-worth it.
Landing Page Optimization
Great SEO strategies often consist of high-quality landing pages that maximize conversions. For many websites, their landing pages are critical to their sales. Here’s a perfect example of a landing page that’s optimized for SEO and conversions:
The highest converting landing pages typically have:
- Catchy Headline and Subheading
- Strong Call to Action
- Captivating Hero Image
- Special Promotions
- Social Proof
SEO Helps Search Engines Understand Your Site
You website simply won’t gain traction if Google’s crawl bots can’t understand it. On average, an SEO friendly website will drive significantly more traffic than one that isn’t. Let’s go deeper on how SEO can help search engines understand your website:
On-Page Elements
SEO is all about optimizing the on-page aspects of a website. Things like title tags, meta descriptions, URL slugs, keywords, headings, and links are essential.
These not only help readers but also help search engines understand your page. As a result, your site will rank higher and get more visibility.
Crawlability
Crawlability is one of the most important factors in optimizing websites. When Google can easily crawl a site, it leads to higher rankings.
Things like crawl budget, crawl errors, which pages are being crawled the most, all impact SEO. These should all be closely watched to maximize your search engine rankings.
Internal and External Links
Internal and external links are an important part of SEO. They help search engines understand your web pages and make crawling much easier. Using the right internal linking strategies can also help build topical authority on websites.
Good SEO Builds Trust With Your Audience
We’ve all looked for answers to our questions through the internet before. Have you ever clicked on a page that gave you exactly what you were looking for? Chances are, that website won points with you. Maybe the most effective way to build trust and credibility is through a quality website.
The better we can answer users questions, solve their problems, and help them, the better. This builds trust, credibility, and simply makes your audience like you. The saying “people buy from people they like” can be applied to web design and SEO alike.
Do Web designers need to know SEO?
Web designers should know the basics of SEO. However, the more skilled in SEO, the better. It’s a complex skill to learn—it takes a lot to optimize every aspect of a website. Web designers should consider SEO in every stage of the web design process: The beginning, planning, and launch stages of a project.
Importance of Content in SEO: Supercharge Your Site Traffic
You simply won’t reach your full marketing potential without content. Many websites make the mistake of not investing in one. It’s no coincidence that businesses that blog attract over 55% more visitors than businesses that don’t.
Target Ideal Topics for Your Site
Your company will be a perfect fit for many queries. Maybe you’re a SaaS company that sells appointment scheduling software. In this case, your ideal target keyword would be something like “best scheduling software”.
Why is this so valuable? Because people searching for this keyword are likely looking to purchase.
There’s also value in targeting a similar audience for a different query. Something like “how to set up an appointment”. The search intent is different—people aren’t necessarily looking to purchase a software product. However, there’s still tons of value in this topic.
The person searching for this wants to learn about your niche. By ranking for this keyword, you’re driving traffic from a highly relevant audience. These users are likely on the market for buying scheduling software… At least at some point in the future. They’re warm leads.
You can still use this as an opportunity to convert users. Email captures, newsletter signups, free trials, free giveaways, are all perfect things to offer this audience.
Nurture A Target Audience
Users typically come back to websites throughout their buyer’s journey. Creating content helps you nurture them as they get closer to finally making a purchase.
SEO and Web Design Go Hand-In-Hand
In the end, a beautiful website is only effective if it can be found. Invest in SEO, execute the right strategies, and reap its rewards: Highly targeted traffic, ongoing conversions, and little maintenance required.
Embark Can Fix Your SEO in Your Web Design
Here at Embark, we build websites that powerfully engage your audience and boost your online presence. If you’re ready to elevate your online presence and create a website that truly resonates with your audience, reach out to us today for a complimentary 30-minute consultation. Let us help you bring your vision to life and achieve your digital marketing goals.
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Sources:
Soulo, T. (2023). 96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here’s How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]. ahrefs. Retrieved from https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/.
