How Web Design and SEO Work Together for a Successful Website

In this article, you will learn from our guest author Niels Neumann, to what extent SEO and web design are related, which points you have to pay attention to when creating a website in order to conquer good rankings, and what ultimately the real goal of SEO and web design is.

What is SEO and web design?

First of all, I would like to briefly define SEO and web design. Search engine optimization encompasses all measures, that increase the visibility of the website on search engines. Actually, this should not be anything new. Designing a website, however, is a bit more difficult because this term can mean different things. According to Wikipedia, web design is defined as "the visual, functional, and structural design of websites for the internet" and is further distinguished from web development. Thus, the term web design primarily deals with the visual and content design of a website.

How are SEO and web design related?

At first glance, SEO and web design are two separate fields and only have a small intersection through on-page SEO, more on this later. For example, there are also the professional divisions of the web designer and also of the SEO specialist. A web designer designs and creates websites. An SEO specialist optimizes websites to be easily found on Google. However, there are also many web designers who also offer search engine optimization in addition.

Upon closer inspection, however, SEO and web design have a large intersection and are part of the same company goal. In this article, I would like to explain to you how SEO and web design are related and what needs to be considered when designing a search engine optimized website.

Web design and SEO share a common goal

Every marketing activity of a company ultimately serves the same goal, regardless of the industry, size, and business model: to generate more sales. After all, SEO and web design also only serve this one goal. The concrete KPIs in online marketing can of course differ, regardless of whether it is the number of generated leads or the sales achieved in an online shop. These key figures can ultimately also be converted into sales.

SEO and web design are a part that serves the larger goal of revenue. This goal is broken down into the two parts: attract visitors to your own website and convince them of the product or offering, thereby generating sales. I always like to use the two terms "traffic" and "conversion". Conversion, for those of you who don't know the term, a brief explanation: Conversion is another word for target action. This could be, for example, a completed contact form, the download of an e-book, or the purchase of a product in an online shop.

In other words, SEO and web design are two variables of an equation. Both variables could be improved. If one of the two variables is poor, the result, i.e. the sales, is correspondingly poor. If a website lacks visitors, even a great website is useless. If you have a website that is easy to find but doesn't convince the visitors, it's also pointless.

In summary, it can be said that SEO and web design serve a common goal and should therefore be viewed together and not separately.

SEO on-page factors

Another similarity between SEO and web design is the on-page factors in the SEO area. The so-called on-page SEO factors are the elements on a webpage that positively or negatively influence the ranking of the page in the search results. These include, among others,

• Page title
• Meta Description
• Heading structure (H1-H6)
• Texts, images, videos, and contents of the page
• Structured data
• Page load speed
• Internal links
• Responsive web design

All these SEO factors also affect the area of web design at the same time. All these things are determined when designing the website. Either these factors are directly optimized correctly or need to be improved afterward. That's why it is also important for web designers to have some basic knowledge of SEO.

On-page factors are among the most important factors in the SEO area. Especially since Google focuses on satisfying the search intention and thus websites should be designed for users, the On-page optimization plays an important role. Of course, Off-page factors such as backlinks are also important. However, the corresponding page should first be optimized before you push the ranking of a page through backlinks. Otherwise, you're trying to drive on the freeway with the parking brake on.

The design of the content

A well-known SEO on-page factor is the content of a page. For example, the length of the text or more precisely the thoroughness with which a topic is explained plays an important role. Google likes content that thoroughly addresses the questions or problems of users. But images, infographics, or videos are also important. To connect to the point of on-page factors: Ultimately, the content of the web pages also has to be well designed. This is exactly where web design comes into play. With visually appealing web design in combination with good on-page optimization, the content becomes more appealing to users. Nobody wants to simply "read through" websites like a book. Ultimately, this also relates to the company goal of generating leads or purchases.

Nowadays, the so-called User Experience also plays a role. This User Experience is met through user-oriented and visually appealing web design.

Advantages through SEO-optimized web design

Maybe you're now wondering, what advantages arise from SEO-optimized web design? The following advantages result from the interplay of SEO and web design:

Optimal on-page design

As already explained above, good on-page optimization during website creation creates a solid foundation with which the websites can rank. I have written a separate section on this topic further down, where the disadvantages of ignoring search engine optimization in the process of website creation are explained.

Building a sales channel

The successful interplay of SEO and web design builds a complete sales channel for the company. SEO brings users to the website. Good, conversion-optimized web design turns visitors into a lead or customers. Thus, you can build a completely self-sufficient sales channel.

This sales channel is also sustainable, since correct White-Hat search engine optimization produces sustainable rankings and thus sustainably produces leads. The company has thus created an asset.

Disadvantages due to non-consideration of SEO web design

As mentioned above, ignoring on-page factors in the website creation leads to poorer to no search engine rankings. This can also have effects on the company's success or sales. This is especially relevant against the background that the on-page factors are the easiest to influence SEO factors and are the cheapest to optimize. Link building can be cost-intensive and before you deal with it, the on-page factors should be optimized.

Unfortunately, there are many service providers who offer web design and have no knowledge in the field of SEO. The websites they create are usually not really seo-technically optimized and therefore do not rank well. If the website has previously ranked well, there may be a drop in Google ranking after the relaunch and possibly a loss of sales as a result.

Two further factors that play a role here are, firstly, that web design is a diverse activity. Web design not only includes technical aspects such as programming but also creative aspects. A web designer with a design background is likely to pay little attention to SEO. On the other hand, many Website-Baukasten quickly and easily to create websites, without prior knowledge in the field of SEO. With many websites of self-employed individuals who were self-created with a construction kit, the on-page factors were correspondingly not optimized. You can find an overview of the most popular CMS in the Content Management Systeme (CMS)-category on OMR Reviews.

Since a very important factor is the SEO content of the website sometimes search engine optimization cannot just be carried out without also changing the design of the page. This can lead to the need to redesign large parts of the website. This in turn leads to additional costs.

Tips for implementing web design & SEO

Now you're probably wondering how you can combine SEO and web design? In this section, I would like to give you 3 tips with which you can successfully build a website:

Put yourself in customers' shoes

Customer orientation is the most important thing in sales in order to achieve sales. What needs and goals do your customers have? Which problems? Which feelings? All these things should be addressed on the website to hit exactly the right target group and ultimately achieve sales with the customers.

On the other hand, search engine optimization itself is always customer or user-oriented: During the Keyword research you look at which terms your potential customers enter in the search engine and thus select your relevant keywords accordingly. When conceiving the content, you orient yourself to the search intention of the customers and the previously determined keywords.

The ability to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and listen to your customers helps you to create good pages for your website.

Holistic view

In order to be able to effectively combine search engine optimization and web design, you need a holistic view of the topic of marketing. Not only knowledge from search engine optimization or web design is necessary.

Sometimes best practices from web design are not necessarily best practices from the field of SEO - for example headlines. Especially in the "above the fold" area they can pose a problem. Web designers would probably choose a headline that is particularly attention-grabbing against the background of conversion optimization. However, for search engine optimization, it is important that the H1 header contains the focus keyword. So there can be conflicts here.

There can also be different points of view regarding content. From a pure web design point of view, the website should look as good as possible by using images and videos. However, this can lead to large website sizes, which negatively affects loading time and thus SEO performance.

In order to effectively combine SEO and web design, you have to weigh up and find a balance.

Build trust

In general, the topic of trust plays an important role in both topics. High-quality backlinks generate trust with search engines that the linked page is an important and high-quality page.

At the same time, the topic of trust plays an important role in web design. In order to convince visitors to a website, and thus potential customers, trust must be built. Trust can be generated, for example, via social proof.

To combine SEO and effective web design, you could, for example, write guest posts for other sites. This way, you generate backlinks and at the same time show your expertise in the form of high-quality content. In addition, you can then publish logos from the website for which you have written guest posts on your website.

Which SEO and web design tools are recommended?

Now you are probably asking yourself which tools you can use to combine web design with SEO. In the following you will find a list of tools that can support you:

Elementor: In principle, I can recommend WordPress as a platform. With WordPress, there are many page builders like Elementor, Divi or Oxygen with which you can build beautiful websites yourself, adjust SEO settings as you like and also optimize in terms of loading speed. What I would advise against would be website builders like Wix, where you are very limited in design and the website performance is rather poor. An advantage of Elementor is also that there is a large community for support and a large selection of templates, also created by users.

KWFinder by Mangools: As an SEO tool, I find the KWFInder to be the tool with the best price-performance ratio since it fundamentally offers many functions of the other tools, just at a cheaper price. With the KWFInder, you can carry out your Keyword research analyze the search results, analyze backlinks of competitors, and track the ranking for certain keywords. Another advantage is the simple user interface.

SurferSEO: To be able to optimize the website technically on-page, I work with SurferSEO. The tool gives concrete recommendations for on-page optimization. The tool tells you, for example, how often certain words should occur, how many images competitors use on average, and how many sections and headings are used on average. SurferSEO then gives a score that is much more precise than, for example, the score from Yoast.

Hotjar: As a tool for conversion optimization, I use Hotjar. Hotjar can be used free of charge. One function of Hotjar is heat maps and session recordings. These help you to find decisions regarding the website design. With Hotjar you can find out how visitors view your websites and interact with them. This way, you can find errors and improve them in terms of user experience.

Here you can also find a Overview of the best SEO tools and the best website builders.

Conclusion on SEO and Web Design:

In this post, I have explained to you the advantages of search engine optimized web design and where there are common intersections between SEO and web design. It is definitely important when web designing to always keep an eye on search engine optimization so as not to have to do double work. Hopefully you could take away some tips and tool recommendations.

For more tool recommendations, you can visit OMR Reviews, where you can find verified user reviews in addition to a variety of tools.