Having a well-designed website is more important than many realize. We know that it impacts user experience, but did you know that it also impacts where it appears in search engine rankings? That’s right, if your website is poorly designed, it may appear lower in search results, ultimately providing your site with less traffic. Here are just a few ways that web design impacts search engine rankings:
Page Speed
One factor that most search engines consider is how fast your website loads. Since most people are likely to give up on a webpage if it doesn’t load fast enough, search engines place faster websites at the top of their search rankings and bump down those that load slowly. A poorly designed website is less likely to load quickly and therefore hamper your search rankings.
Navigation
The ability to easily navigate a website is important for two reasons. First, viewers are more likely to return to a website if it is easy to use. Second, search engines gather information about how a website is structured and uses this information as a part of their rankings. When designing a website, it’s important to pay attention to user experience so that people and search engines alike can easily find what they are looking for.
Images
Finally, search engines place a lot of importance on images. They need to not only be optimized for the web but labeled in such a way that makes them easy to identify. Proper web design includes this and makes it more likely that your images will appear in search results, or help your website move up the rankings.
There are many ways that the design of your website impacts where it will rank in search results. If you want your website to look great, and to also rank highly in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, contact us today to learn about our custom web design services.
