How to Optimise Your Website for Search Engines - Essential SEO Tips for Web Designers

Are you struggling to get your beautifully designed website noticed? If you're a web designer, you must understand the SEO basics to ensure your website not only looks good on the screen but also ranks well on search engines. This guide will cover all essential SEO tips for designers, from keyword integration to mobile optimisation, helping you enhance your site's visibility and attract more traffic.

Introduction

Designing a visually stunning website is just one piece of the puzzle. To ensure your masterpiece reaches its intended audience, you need to optimize it for search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can seem daunting at first, but it's crucial for increasing your site's visibility and attracting more traffic. Let's dive into essential SEO tips to help you optimize your website and boost your search engine rankings.

Understanding SEO Basics

What is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation?

Imagine you've recently designed the most beautiful website for a small business client who sells delicious bakery products. Your client is new in the town and they're looking to attract customers to their bakery. They've hired you to design their website but now after a few months since you delivered their website, they don't seem to be happy.

You go visit your clients and they start complaining about your service. You're confused because earlier they were quite happy with the overall look and feel of the website. And now they're refusing to pay you your complete fees.

What do you think made the clients unhappy? Why are they blaming your website for not bringing them any business?

While you might think the clients are being unreasonable for expecting the website to grow their business, they're not completely wrong. You as a designer focused purely on the design of their website and ignored the one thing that mattered to your clients.

The one thing that every business owner thinks about day and night. Return on Investment.

So how do you ensure your beautifully designed website brings in revenue for your clients? You focus on SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

Simply put, Search Engine Optimisation is the entire process of enhancing your website's written and visual content, user experience, accessibility compliance and overall performance to improve its visibility on search engines like Google and Bing.

But why improve the visibility? So that the right customer, the person who's looking to solve their own problems can find your website and connect with you. It's a two way street. You give them a reason to visit your website and they provide you with loyalty and potentially business.

The goal of SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is to rank higher in the search results for keywords and phrases search by people and relevant to your business.

Why is SEO Important for Designers?

Earlier I talked about a scenario when your client complains to you, the designer, about their website failing to get any new customers. You might be wondering that as a designer you are not responsible for improving their website's visibility or SEO. You must be thinking that you are only responsible for the look and feel of the website. You'll argue that SEO isn't a designer's job but that of a marketer or a developer.

If you're a web designer working in a large company with a dedicated team of marketers, developers, and designers, you might restrict yourself to the design aspects of a website.

But if you're working in a small firm, work freelance for clients, or even plan to offer more value to your clients or employers, you must understand the fundamentals of SEO. You will be able to expand your horizons and understand how your beautiful designs help the people who're searching for your content. You'll realise why some of your best designs aren't even coming across the right people.

A well implemented SEO strategy ensures that your website is both beautiful and discoverable. It attracts more visitors to your website which leads to higher engagements and conversions.

Keyword Integration for SEO Optimisation

Research Relevant Keywords

Whenever you search something on Google, your search phrases would often go like, 'best asian restaurants near me' or 'cheapest dental care' or 'tofu vegan recipes'. These are the keywords that Google's algorithm matches with millions of websites online and provides you search results that would be best suited to your query.

If you want your website to pop up when someone searches for 'vegan bakery recipes', you need to have related keywords spread throughout your website's content.

Start off by identifying the topics your business associates with the most. Now do a simple Google search on the topics and see what pages pop up at the top results. Look for related search terms and questions people have had around the keywords.

You can even have a look at the similar search keywords that pop up under the search bar as you type your search query to get some long tail keywords with low competition.

These are some rudimentary ways to find keywords relevant to your site's content and to figure out what people are searching for online.

Google Keyword Planner with Keyword Ideas

While this is good practice to get trending real time keywords, you must leverage some advanced tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush which can help you find the best keywords to target based on location, average monthly searches and other advanced filters. I agree that there's a learning curve to these tools but it's a worthy investment in the long term.

Use Keywords Strategically for Better SEO

In the early 90s when search engine algorithms were fairly young and there weren't too many websites to search through, keyword stuffing was the most popular way to get your website to the top of search results. I remember marketing agencies recommending brands to take a few keywords and repetitively add them to all the web pages in a white font with the smallest font size. They figured out ways to trick the algorithm.

A lot of websites would also create bulk content where keywords would be inserted into text with no relevance or context. It made no sense to add the keyword, 'best most popular services' frequently on all the pages of a website.

This keyword stuffing practice no longer works today because search algorithms figured out this malpractice and implemented strategies to mark these stuffed websites as low-quality and spam. Today such practices will not only push your website to the 899th page on Google but will also get it banned from ever appearing on any search engine ever.

So what should be your keyword strategy? Follow these steps:

Integrate keywords naturally in your website's content. Edit or remove any piece of content that doesn't feel natural with the keywords.
Add your keywords into your headings and subheadings without making it sound irrelevant.
Use synonyms and related keywords if you feel that a single keyword is overused.
Include the keywords in your web page's meta description and meta title. If you're using a CMS or Content Management System, you can enter this in the provided form fields in page settings. If your website is built using raw code, either enter the meta tags in the 'head' tags in the HTML structure or ask the developers to implement them. Search engines use this meta information to display search result snippets.
If your website has images, they must have alt text describing the image. Add your keywords to enhance the search visibility of these images. Alt text isn't just for accessibility issues but also for search engines to read what your images are about.

Ultimately, your main focus should be offering relevant content on your website while incorporating relevant keywords seamlessly.

Optimise Images for Search Engine Visibility

As a designer, you must be wondering how images can contribute to better search engine rankings. Surprisingly the images on your website aren't just there for visual purposes, they help search engines realise the importance of your website. Only if the search engines are able to understand what your images, how relevant they are to your content and to the user, and if they can be loaded quickly.

Use Descriptive File Names and Alt Text to improve SEO

We're all lazy when it comes to naming files on our computers, especially images. Our cameras have always handled this task by assigning a numerical name like, 'DSC23378.jpg' or 'PXL45558.png' so that we don't have to name them every time we click a photograph.

While this is perfectly fine to store on our local computers or even on the cloud, it is definitely not useful for search engines crawling your website.

When a search engine crawls your website, it can read the written content and identify the keywords but it has no eyes to read the images you've placed within that content. So how does a search engine algorithm read your images? It does it in two ways:

Descriptive File Names: An image with the file name set as 'soy-sauce-asian-food.jpg' will be easily read by search engines and will even be served in the 'Images' section on Google because it reads the relevant keywords in the file name. If the website images have generic names like 'IMG1234.jpg', the search engine will simply ignore the image hurting your website's SEO.
Image Alt Text: No, image alt texts aren't just for visually challenged visitors using audio readers on websites. They provide descriptions of your images for the search engines as well. Consider this as a bonus opportunity to integrate relevant keywords into your images and see your website rank higher in search results.

Compress Images

Large images can slow down your website, negatively impacting user experience and SEO. Use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to compress images without sacrificing quality.

Serve them in modern WebP formats that can offer higher resolution at lower sizes.

Always be considerate of the size of images on your website. If an image is going to be placed in a container on your site that is 400px by 600px, then it doesn't make sense to upload a 2000px by 3000px image with a 300dpi resolution. Also, make sure the size is predefined for your images otherwise you'll see a lot of layout shift happen on the web page which is plain annoying for visitors.

Do you know why I'm emphasising so much on optimising your website images for search engine marketing? Here are 5 reasons why:

People are moving from text based search to image based search.
Search engines are now offering rich results with images and videos and not just links.
People are more likely to consume image based search results quicker than text based.
Image search results on Google and Bing can redirect to your website quicker than text based.
People are used to consuming more visual media now more than ever before because of Instagram and other social media habits.

Improve Site Speed for Better Search Engine Rankings

Minimize HTTP Requests

Reduce the number of elements on your page, such as scripts, images, and CSS files, to decrease HTTP requests and improve loading times.

If you've built your website using the Wordpress CMS, you might have used a ton of plugins and add ons to implement cool new features and exciting UI elements. But you have to be very cautious of adding more and more plugins on your website.

Each plugin or UI library makes a new HTTP request every time a user loads your website. This hugely impacts the load times and makes your website perform poorly. Search engine algorithms don't like it when your website is slow and ranks it way lower than the competing websites that load faster.

Enable Browser Caching

Browser caching stores some data on visitors' computers, so they don’t have to reload the entire page every time they visit. This speeds up your site for returning visitors.

You can do this with the help of third-party plugins like WP-Rocket for Wordpress or even implement it manually if you can get under the source code of your website.

While doing this might not impact the SEO rankings directly for new users, it is a recommended practice if you're providing valuable content for people who visit your website on a regular basis.

Optimise CSS and JavaScript

CSS Stylesheets include the complete look and feel of your website such as the fonts, colours, line spacing, layout structure, mobile responsive styling, and even animations.

If you've ever worked with a web developer or even been through the source code of your website in the browser, you will see thousands of lines of code just to make the website appear as you've designed it.

Similarly, the JavaScript code works under your website to implement all the functionality of clicking buttons, sliding images, animating graphics, handling data, submitting forms, and enabling pop ups.

When a website loads on your visitor's web browser, multiple requests are made to the servers to fetch these CSS and JavaScript files. A lot of times, these files can be inefficient and bloated with unnecessary code that is either not required on initial load or even on the available page.

Minify your CSS and JavaScript files by removing unnecessary characters and spaces to improve the load times and thus your SEO. Tools like CSSNano and UglifyJS can help with this process. Plugins like WP-Rocket also offers a feature to minify these files and even defer them from loading until required.

Enhance Mobile Responsive & Mobile First Design for modern SEO Optimisation

When was the last time you sat down on your laptop or desktop computer to quickly browse through your favourite restaurant's website? Probably a few years back.

We're living in the age of smartphones where 90% of our digital interactions happen on mobile devices. Be it shopping online, ordering food, or even booking a dentist appointment, everything happens on our smartphones.

How many times have you been frustrated and left a website simply because it wasn't working on your mobile? You might have thought about picking up your laptop and viewing it on your laptop. But how often? Probably only if necessary for submitting your college assignment, updating your bank details or filing your tax returns.

If it weren't necessary, you would simply leave the website and look for the one that works on your smartphone. Wouldn't you?

This user experience trend is well understood by algorithms of almost every search engine. They favour websites that offer equal if not superior user experience on mobile devices.

Here is an example of Google's famous PageSpeed Insights tool that will score your website based on how your website performs for your visitors. You can see that the Mobile version has more priority than the Desktop version. The general scores on most websites will be lower on the mobile versions than on the desktop because of low internet speeds and mostly because they're not much optimised for mobiles.

Use Responsive Design or Mobile First Approach

Ensure your website adapts to different screen sizes and devices. A responsive design improves user experience and is favoured by search engines.

The last thing you want is a website that looks and works well on a desktop and starts breaking apart on a mobile device.

In my experience, it is always best to follow a mobile first approach where you start designing and developing for small screens first and then you expand the design to work with larger screens.

It is always advisable to adopt a responsive approach to all your design decisions. A lot of times I have seen cool timeline graphics, animations, sliders and carousels looking beautiful on desktop screens have broken down to pieces on mobile devices.

If you're designing first approach, your entire process changes. You start off by using minimal amount of content because of limited screen real estate on smartphones. You focus on touch based interactions as opposed to click based interactions on desktops and laptops.

You are more concerned about faster load times on slow network speeds. You care about building quick and efficient user journeys that don't overwhelm the users with any sort of disturbances like pop-ups or banner ads.

If you're able to get your website to run as smoothly as it runs on your desktop or laptop, you will have not only created the best user experience for your visitors but will also be favoured by search engines.

Improve Navigation and User Experience for greater SEO

Simplify Navigation

Create a clear, intuitive navigation structure to help your visitors find what they're looking for quickly. Don't make your navigation bars and menus too complicated. They will not only make it hard for your users to find what they're looking for but will also hamper your search engine rankings.

Use descriptive labels for menus and links as search engines look for these accessibility tags to rank your website.

I understand the challenge that comes with navigating through hundreds of web pages but you need to provide a user friendly navigation with categories, primary/secondary menus, and other links on your web pages.

Don't bury important web pages under nested sub-menus or your visitors and search engines will never be able to find them.

Use Internal Linking for SEO Improvement

Internal links guide users to related content on your site and help search engines understand your site's structure. Include internal links naturally within your content without overwhelming your visitors with too many links.

The last thing you would want is to send your visitors to another web page while they're busy reading your post. But search engines love it when there are several internal links to relevant content on your website.

So place internal links very strategically either with descriptive links within the content, or separate from your key content without disrupting your user's flow of reading.

Create a Sitemap and Submit it To Search Engines

A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website. It helps search engines crawl and index your site more efficiently. Use tools like Yoast SEO or Google XML Sitemaps to generate a sitemap. You must submit a sitemap to Google Search Console and Microsoft Bing Search to enable search engine crawlers on your website.

Focus on Quality Content for Higher Search Rankings

Create Valuable Content

There are millions of websites out there serving content that adds no value to their readers. Most of them never appear on any search results not because they're not optimised for keywords but because they're

Produce high-quality, informative content that addresses your audience's needs and interests.

Well-written, valuable content encourages visitors to spend more time on your site and improves your SEO.

Update Content Regularly

Regularly updating your content keeps it fresh and relevant. Search engines favor sites with up-to-date information, so make it a habit to review and update your content periodically.

Utilize Meta Tags

Write Compelling Meta Titles and Descriptions

Meta titles and descriptions are crucial for attracting clicks from search engine results. Write clear, compelling titles and descriptions that include relevant keywords and entice users to visit your site.

Use Header Tags Appropriately

Use header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to structure your content. Header tags help search engines understand the hierarchy and relevance of your content. Include keywords in your headers to improve SEO.

Secure Your Website

Use HTTPS

HTTPS encrypts data between the user's browser and your website, ensuring secure communication. Search engines prioritize secure sites, so make sure your website uses HTTPS.

Regularly Update Plugins and Themes

Outdated plugins and themes can pose security risks. Regularly update them to protect your site from vulnerabilities and improve performance.

FAQs

What are keywords, and why are they important for SEO?

Keywords are terms or phrases that users type into search engines to find information. They are important for SEO because they help search engines understand the content of your site and match it with relevant search queries.

How can I improve my website's loading speed?

You can improve loading speed by compressing images, minimizing HTTP requests, enabling browser caching, and optimizing CSS and JavaScript files.

What is alt text, and why is it important?

Alt text is a description of an image used by search engines and screen readers for visually impaired users. It's important because it improves SEO and ensures accessibility.

How often should I update my website's content?

Regularly updating your content keeps it relevant and fresh. Aim to review and update your content at least every few months, or more frequently if possible.

What is a sitemap, and how do I create one?

A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website, helping search engines crawl and index your site. You can create one using tools like Yoast SEO or Google XML Sitemaps.

Wrapping Up

Optimizing your website for search engines is essential for increasing its visibility and attracting more traffic. By incorporating these SEO tips into your design process, you can create a site that is not only visually appealing but also performs well in search engine rankings. Focus on keyword integration, image optimization, site speed, mobile responsiveness, and quality content to enhance your website's SEO and drive better results for your business.

Don't let your beautiful designs go unnoticed—take action today to optimize your website and reach a wider audience.