There are a lot of things that go well together. Peanut butter and jelly. Oreos and milk. Romeo and Juliet. Yin and yang. Rock and roll. So, when it comes to wanting your business to rank higher in search engine results pages, there is one aspect you should consider pairing with your SEO strategy. This thing is often overlooked, but it plays an important role in how your customers or clients perceive you. That thing? A well-designed website. If done correctly, visitors to your pages will not notice anything out of the ordinary. Everything will flow seamlessly. Let’s see how, like a hand in glove, they pair together.
Ensure That Your Website Is Mobile Friendly
It is no secret that more than 50 percent of website visits come via mobile devices. In fact, searching by using a desktop has been on the decline for several years. And if you stay up to date with SEO or web design trends, you are already aware that having a mobile-friendly site is paramount to having a thriving online presence.
In fact, it is so important that in 2015, mobile-friendliness became a ranking factor by Google, and the company debuted mobile-first indexing in 2017. With more than half of your customers or patients using mobile devices to access your site, it is imperative that it is designed to load correctly on a smartphone or tablet. Your search ranking could drop if you have a high bounce rate. That is one signal that Google does not like.
Nobody Likes A Slow-Loading Site
Part of making sure your page is loading properly is to ensure that it is loading quickly. In fact, if your pages are taking quite a bit of time to appear, then that may be because of poor website design. And if your ranking is not going well, then it is probably because people are leaving your site because it is too slow.
What can you do to help? Start by cleaning house a bit. Remove unnecessary plugins. Optimize images. Allow caching for browsers. In the end, it should take about two seconds for your site to load. Remember, we live in a society that has grown very impatient. If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, approximately half of your visitors will leave. How fast it loads is even more important on mobile devices, where people are even less patient.
How fast a page loads is important to Google, too, because it affects how the search giant crawls it. Slower speeds mean fewer crawled pages, meaning fewer pages being indexed. And with those pages not indexed, then that means they will not be ranked, either.
Your Content Should Be Easy To Read
You are producing great content. It is answering the questions your customers and patients have. It is showing your expertise. But if it is designed poorly, no one will read it. Presentation matters just as much as page speeds.
Imagine visiting a page where hyperlinks were randomly placed or content blocks were in weird places on the page. Or maybe you have been on sites where the text was either too light or too dark against a background. Or maybe the text was too small or in a strange font. How did you feel? Probably like you wanted to leave that page as soon as possible.
When designing a website, how to make it easy for visitors to access your content is a huge consideration. Everything from line length to accessibility for those with disabilities to fonts to white space are items that have to be evaluated consistently so that you are providing an optimal website experience for your customers and patients.
Give Your Visitors A Way To Find Items Around Your Site
Remember when we mentioned crawling? One element that will help with your ranking is a sitemap with metadata about your pages. It lets search engines know which pages are most important on your websites, which is crucial for larger sites and newer ones that may yet not have many external links. A sitemap also helps visitors when they are searching for content and where to find it.
Build And Cultivate Your Visitors’ Trust
Consider a website that is clean, loads quickly, has content that is easy to find, and is readable. It would be safe to say that you would trust that site more than one that is a jumbled mess. One gives the air of expertise and respectability. The other one screams amateurish attributes. And while it is difficult to measure trust, gaining it is an important aspect of having your site rank higher.
It makes sense, because professional looking websites are the ones that people visit on a regular basis. If it looks old or is hard to navigate, people will leave and may not return. Both instances affect ranking. Make sure the effort you put into having a well-designed website is equal to the effort you put into running your brick-and-mortar business. People are quick to form opinions, so make sure your site looks great from the start.
MDPM Consulting Can Help You Build A Well-Designed Website
At MDPM Consulting, we can develop a website that showcases your expertise and that helps you gain and retain customers and patients using a digital, SEO-focused content marketing strategy. To find out more, please contact MDPM Consulting today at 972-781-8861.