If you run a business website and you are keen to attract more targeted traffic, SEO is one of the best ways to go about it.
However, SEO is such a large and complex area that it can be difficult to know where to start and how to progress. One of the first things that you need to get right is the design of your website. A good web designer will design your website from the ground up to focus on optimization as much as possible before it even goes live. According to website maintenance experts here are a few of the areas that a web designer will focus on.
Navigation
Good navigation is important for many reasons. Most importantly, it allows visitors to use your website to find out where they should be going immediately, which is crucial in order to keep them on your site for longer. If they find the website confusing and cannot work out where to go to make a purchase or find the information they need, they are more likely to leave. However, navigation is also important for good SEO. When you create the pages for your website, you should ensure that there is a definite structure to them so that you can optimize each page in the most effective way using targeted keywords. By ensuring that the navigation is clear and easy to follow, your designer will make this a lot easier for you.
URLs
Ask your designer to allow you to create your own URLs when you publish new pages on your website. Some websites make the mistake of having the URLs automatically generated, creating long streams of nonsensical numbers and letters. However, the URL is a good place to not only insert your main keyword but to also provide information for potential visitors. It could therefore encourage more clicks at the same time as giving your SEO a helping hand.
Structure of Content
Content is crucial for SEO, as you probably already know. You will want to publish new content regularly on your website in order to optimize it, so you should ensure that your designer makes this easy for you to do by including a blog in your website’s design. In addition, a good designer should structure the content so that you can make use of header tags and Meta data, which will help to ensure good SEO practice whenever you create a new page.
Alt Attributes
If you use images in your website, they have little SEO power on their own. However, you can add descriptive alt attributes to them using your main keywords for the pages on which they appear. Make sure that your designer creates your website in such a way that you are able to make use of this feature and that it is easy to do. Optimise Your Website from the Start You can optimize your website over the months and years by building links from a variety of other sites. However, you can make it a lot easier on yourself by starting off properly. A good web designer can incorporate all of the above areas into your website to ensure that you are in the best possible position to start optimising your site and bringing in targeted traffic from the day you launch it.
So make sure you ask your designer about how they plan to optimize your site for the search engines before you hire them.