Website design plays a big role in its SEO. This is a fact that can easily go overlooked if you’re taking care of your SEO by yourself. In one of Google’s many updates to its “SEO standards” and algorithms, it stipulated that a “good web design” will bolster a website’s ranking. Now that’s a very very broad term thanks to how subjective any design aspect can be.

What Google is really trying to say is that your website needs to be a well-designed website. A well-designed website keeps its user interface and experience top-of-mind. It has well-placed and quality content and frequent updates of that content. These are basic requirements for anyone’s definition of a “good website”.

Let’s do a deeper dive into what a search engine like Google wants out of your website’s design to ensure good ranking:

Structure of your website

A website’s design doesn’t only take into consideration what’s on the front end, visible to all users, but also how the back end has been designed. Internal linking is an important aspect of optimizing any website while it’s being developed. It’s important to ensure that any page on your website can be reached within three clicks from any page.

Duplication of pages should be avoided. Every page should have unique content, pertaining to its URL.

You should carefully choose your URL. You don’t want a lengthy URL or one containing inappropriate characters. This would make it difficult for users to remember your URL and the search engine may not properly process the URL when a search occurs.

Pertain to the HTML standard

When a search occurs, the search engine parses your HTML code to find related content. Now, if your code is not written according to the HTML standards, your website ranking could potentially decline.

Make your site responsive

We can’t stress the importance of a responsive website enough. We’ve run through a whole checklist of what you should do for SEO when redesigning a website here. You already know mobile is where it’s at. Mobile users are spending more and more time browsing on their mobiles than ever before. It’s hit a point where desktop use will soon become secondary to mobile use. Be well assured your customers, whoever they are, are on mobile and Google knows this as well. That’s why Google will give ranking preference to a responsive mobile website.

Make good use of heading tags

Firstly, if you include attractive headings you will have more visitors to your site. Apart from this, the search engines use these tags, especially H1, to get an idea about the content of your page while crawling.

Ensure quick page loads

It’s never polite to keep anyone waiting. Especially users visiting your website that could be potential customers. Google takes a website’s page load very seriously. There are several test sites, including Google’s own.

Redesign your website

Now we’re talking about the actual front-end design. I’ve seen many clients that fear redesigning their website because they think it’ll lose their high rankings. If done right, you needn’t worry. It’s something any established digital marketing agency or website design company based in Dubai can take care of for you.