The design of your website plays a significant role in determining the page rank and traffic of your website. While it is necessary to give users reliable and high quality content, you should also maintain the balance with the design of your website.
The better your web design is the higher your page rank will be. Getting on the good books of search engine spiders is essential to gain organic traffic easily and this is the primary aim of any SEO analyst. Many people have the wrong notion that SEO deals purely with the content. The truth is that SEO starts right from the
beginning of the designing process. I have put together seven points that I’ve found to be effective over the years of my profession as a designer.
Minimize the number of fonts:
The fact that using different fonts for different areas of the page enhances the readability is undeniable. However, to display a font, the browser has to load it before displaying it to the user. It means that with a high number of fonts on the web page, the loading time of the web page will increase. As this isn’t what you want, it is advisable to use as few fonts as possible in order to lighten the website and increase the load time.
Navigation:
Easy navigation is one of the features of a good website. Viewers will stay on your website for a longer time if it is easily navigable. Otherwise, you can be sure that they will find other sites where they can get the information or just dislike your website.
Effective use of White Space:
Having a frame of free white space around the content is a
generally followed policy among many developers. However, you can use this white space effectively to place tools or menus while still protecting the neat look of the website. You should also take care not to clutter this white space by placing too many items.
Replacing Images:
Using images is advisable and also important. However, many developers stick on to it as a rule of thumb and use too many images than needed. This will again increase the website’s loading time. Plus, it will increase the bandwidth which could have been avoided easily. Instead of images that are just added to fill the space, you can use CSS3 gradients. These gradients save the look of your website and also help you keep it light.
Keep it Fresh:
This is one of the oldest tricks that still prove to be effective. Search engines give high ranks to websites that are updated frequently. Therefore, even if you don’t have new information to share with your viewers, you can repurpose the content on your website and make small changes with its look on a regular basis. This will help you get high ranks from search engines.
First Things First:
Sounds fancy, isn’t it? Yes, you must keep a list of prioritized content and keywords and use those
keywords on the very first page of your website. This first page could be your Home or About page. You must have your important keywords on this page, which is greatly necessary to get good page ranks for your website.
Social Media:
Link your social media presence to your website effectively. There may not be many companies that have not done this. However, the important thing to be noted is that we should do it effectively in such a way that visitors find it easy to follow your business on your social media pages.
These are some simple and effective steps to design a website effectively to increase traffic. Hope this helps!
