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SEO (search engine optimization) and effective website design go hand in hand. Good website design is about creating a website that attracts your target audience and gets them to take some kind of action. However, if the site doesn't follow current SEO best practices, its rankings will suffer, resulting in a lower number of visitors who actually engage with the site.

Conversely, if the focus is on SEO and how to please search engine spiders, then the website may rank highly and get a lot of search engine traffic, but if the design is very unsatisfactory, that is not the same. In order to succeed in today's digital environment, it is necessary to focus on website design and search engine optimization.

1. But, won’t SEO kill the creativity of web designers?

Over the past five years, a huge demand for "optimized design" has been embraced by web designers. Before this, designers mainly focused on the user experience, not the "robot" experience.

Nowadays, designers not only have to make a website look attractive, but also make sure that the call to action must fit into the "fold" of the website page, the website must load quickly, breadcrumb paths must be used, navigation options must be clear and concise, CSS must be used, JavaScript files must be kept to a minimum... it is a difficult task.

Some designers may be wondering, will all these new SEO rules hurt the freedom to create a website?

For "clean" website design, it can help a website load quickly and be easily crawled by search engine spiders. So, in reality, creativity and optimization need to be able to "thrive" together at the same time.

2. Tying It All Together

There are some core elements that underpin every SEO strategy and website design project:

1. Keyword Analysis

When starting a business website project, a thorough keyword analysis is a must. In order to do this, web designers must closely understand the client's target audience and define how the demographics within that audience fit into the larger target market the business is trying to reach. Then, the website should be properly keyword/long-tail keyword optimized.

2. Content Hierarchy

For a business, it is not enough to create good content, they must also strategically plan the placement of content.

Effective planning means placing relevant content into virtual containers and making the content hierarchy visible through creative design and internal linking. Also, an optimized website is one that is friendly to both users and search engine spiders.

3. Think from the user’s perspective

Generally, the more pages or articles your website has, the more chances your target users will find you. When they land on these specific pages, you want to make sure you help them find you easily.

So you have to think from the user's perspective, make it immediately clear to the user where they are on the page they are visiting, and help the user transition from one page to another in as few clicks as possible.

3. Why is SEO strategy so important?

Having the right website structure and information architecture will ultimately help businesses deliver an engaging user experience while reducing the need for every new addition. However, unless your brand is well-known, it is usually the search engines that are responsible for the majority of the traffic that your website receives. SEO strategies have the power to leverage important customer data and uncover new potential revenue streams.

For website owners who are trying to do search engine optimization, there are a few areas that often cause trouble. Now I will provide SEO suggestions to website owners to get higher ranking pages.

1. URL structure

Most websites create URLs that contain a lot of random characters, such as question marks, without keywords or any valuable content. When search engine URLs contain SEO keywords or phrases, the page will rank higher in search engines. Therefore, it is very important to set keywords in the URL.

2. Page title

One of the most important factors in search engine rankings is the page title. However, many websites do not change their page titles. In Lime website building platform, you can easily create titles for your articles and pages by using the SEO title tag plugin.

3. Duplicate content

No search engine likes to see duplicate content. Duplicate content is a major problem for some websites, as category pages and calendar/date pages often cause search engines to find the same content on multiple pages.

There are several ways for website owners to overcome the duplicate content problem. One method is to use a robot.txt file, which is used to instruct search engines which pages should be ignored, leaving only the main pages to be indexed.

4. Meta tags

When designing a traditional static website, you can enter meta tags (descriptions) for each page. Although these tags don’t have as much influence on search engine rankings as they once did, it doesn’t hurt to have them on your pages.

However, most website building platforms do not give users the option to add meta tags when writing articles. For Lime Website Builder users, the Add Meta Tags plugin will allow you to enter meta tags for any page.

4. What are the responsibilities of web designers in SEO?

Search engine optimization is an ongoing process and it cannot be achieved by designing a website in a specific way. Of course, a web designer should put in considerable effort to help a client build an optimized site, but what are the web designer's responsibilities when it comes to SEO, and what are the client's responsibilities?

As a business owner, the optimization of your website is more important to you than it is to the designer (which is not to say that designers don’t care, but designers’ attention is usually focused on the visuals and functionality of the website). You know your client/potential client better than the designer does, so you should have more constructive input into your goals.

Perhaps some clients may not know much about SEO and target keywords, so the ideal situation is to have the client and you work collaboratively on this issue.

In my experience, one of the easiest ways to get clients involved is to simply explain that the words and phrases used on your website (titles, copy, etc.) have a direct impact on your website’s ranking.

I typically ask clients to give me a list of words and phrases that they think potential visitors might use in their searches. This is especially important when designing websites in an industry I'm not very familiar with.

Of course, some research may be required. Should the client take on the responsibility for keyword research, or should the designer do it?

My experience is that the research is usually more effective if the client is involved, but this is not always possible. The designer should be knowledgeable enough to advise the client and should be willing to help, but ultimately it is best to involve the client as much as possible. In fact, if the client cares about SEO, the engagement process will lead to a more reasonable expectation.

It may also be the designer's responsibility to set realistic expectations.

I've had potential clients come to me and say, "I was told by SEO experts that I could rank my website first or second just by inserting competitive keywords on my website pages."

In this case, I would obviously point out, "Search engine optimization requires ongoing work that often cannot be accomplished by creating a website in a certain way."

I often advise clients to add a blog to their website to get more content and improve the chances of ranking.

Conclusion

While this is just a brief summary, these are the most important SEO topics website owners and designers will face. By understanding this knowledge, you can better create websites that are friendly to both users and search engines.

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