SEO, or search engine optimization, utilizes strategies to help a website gain attention by achieving a high ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. The reason why SEO is so sought-after by digital marketers and web designers is because it’s almost like having free advertising. The closer you rank to the top of the first page on Google, the more opportunity there is to be seen by qualified leads looking to connect with a brand like yours.
SEO is not the be-all, end-all in web design and digital marketing however. When SEO is prioritized over the user experience, content readability, and aesthetics of web design, it can have a negative effect. For some websites, their SEO strategies may be doing more damage than good. This is why it’s important to learn where SEO marketing and web design cross over, and what actually makes for high quality, future-proof search engine optimization.
Common mistakes websites make with SEO
You want your website to be search engine-friendly of course but you also want to your site to present well to customers, followers, prospective leads, and any other user clicking on your brand. As a London Ontario website design expert, I’ve seen plenty of websites go down the wrong path with their SEO and inevitably, they don’t see the results they want.
- You may take a blog and populate it with a lot of keywords thinking the more keywords added, the better. For a lot of content marketing blogs, how easy it is to read can grow clouded when the priority is to maximize keyword usage rather than to prioritize quality of content.
- Not all SEO strategies are created equal. Sometimes you may go down a wrong path, not having done the keyword research you need and pursuing dated strategies which could actually be penalizing your site. SEO marketing strategies that worked in 2010 isn’t necessarily going to equate to success a decade later in 2020. Algorithms have changed, consumer behaviour has changed, and how websites are viewed has changed.
- In an effort to maximize your SEO impact, you may have installed a number of apps you don’t need. For inexperienced coders and web designers, they could easily slow down a site with a bunch of applications they don’t need.
- SEO also requires the occasional audit to verify everything’s working as it should. An audit can identify things like broken links, a lack of title tags, the lack of meta descriptions or alt-text, and other issues. If these are left unaddressed, no matter how well the rest of your strategy is, your website’s SEO potential is going to be held back by the mistakes being made.
Help your website with the right SEO
SEO should be blended with the tenants of high quality website design in London, Ontario. A website should be easy to navigate, filled with relevant text and images, presented well aesthetically, and communicate in a straightforward, direct way what your brand is all about.
Search engine optimization should not detract from the readability of your blogs or the presentation of your website. If anything, done right, SEO will help it. An experience web designer with SEO knowledge will conduct an audio first to identify and correct any issues present. From there, so much can be done throughout a website that helps not only search engine placement but also, how its information is consumed by a user. This is the right SEO approach to take.
Optimize your website for search engines and users alike with the top name in website design London Ontario, New Concept Design. We’ll introduce you to SEO best practices and digital marketing strategies that work, helping you build your platform sustainably the right way.