On the surface, Covid was a boon for e-commerce. The US economy alone saw a $219 billion increase in e-commerce sales. It also kicked off a huge wave of small businesses jumping into the online arena.

Of course, many of those businesses made the leap without fully understanding some online essentials, such as search engine optimization.

Without that core understanding of SEO, they don’t always understand the connection between SEO and website design.

Whether business owners understand it or not, though, that connection exists.

If you’re struggling to see the connection, keep reading for our quick guide to how web design affects SEO results like page rank.

 

 

What is Web Design?

 

There is a huge blurry space between web design and web development. Web development typically means the underlying code of a website, while web design usually means the visual components that the visitor sees.

Of course, there is a lot of crossovers because the developer can’t code things like menu options until the designer tells them what it should look like. All of this ties back into SEO because search engines tell developers and designers what sites need to rank.

So, let’s dig into that.

 

Responsive Design

 

One of the ranking factors that play big with search engines is responsive design or mobile-ready design. In essence, it means your website can adapt on the fly to different screen sizes.

Your website design and development must begin with this requirement in mind. If not, search engines will rank your pages lower.

 

Navigation

 

Another ranking factor is the ease of navigation on your site. If people can’t find what they’re looking for on your site with ease, such as your contact page, search engines ding you.

Your site design must make that navigation easy. If you’re not confident about elements of your site design, you can always outsource it to a company like Davidtaylordigital.com.

 

Speed

 

Search engines also put some emphasis on page load speeds. Site design can play a major role in that. Lots of graphics or large image files can slow a site way down.

You need a site that strikes a balance between things like image size and load speeds.

 

Reading Experience

 

Ever visit a site with blocks of dense text in a tiny font? You hated it, right?

The visitor reading experience plays into their overall user experience. UX is another area where search engines will ding you. You need a site design that offers reading-friendly font sizes, white space, and light-colored backgrounds.

 

SEO and Website Design

 

SEO and the website design are distinct, but there is substantial overlap between them in terms of ranking. Fortunately, there are things you can do to make sure your site design doesn’t torpedo your ranking.

Focus on factors that improve user experiences, such as navigation, page load speed, and ease of reading. Also, make sure you employ a responsive design to keep the search engine algorithms happy.

Looking for more SEO tips? Check out some of the other posts over in our SEO section.