When it comes to great website design, what about it do you consider to be the most important thing to have?

Colours? Certainly – you want your website to look great and leave a wonderful first impression with your customers.

Usability? Yes, that’s important too. Everyone hates trying to muddle their way through a website they can’t figure out.

A solid brand? Yes indeed. Having an effective brand will always reflect positively on your company and its team.

What about search engine optimization?

No? You don’t think it’s important? This is where you’re wrong! Having a website designed to look appealing is one thing, but without SEO, all the hard work and effort into its appearance becomes meaningless. Whatever sales you’re trying to get will go to the competition, because you haven’t added any optimization that search engines can pick up on.

Still not convinced? Here are some ways in which SEO contributes greatly to your website’s overall design.

Images

Adding SEO to images is not only considered a white hat SEO practice, but also images contain a little thing you may not be aware of called alt text. Alt text, short for alternative text, reveals to your website’s viewers, as well as search engines, the nature or content the image is associated with. An image that is surrounded by related text will rank better for the keyword it’s optimized for, than an image without any alt text whatsoever.

To give an example of why you need to start adding optimization to images, suppose you’re a local restaurant trying to display photos of your great customers to add a little oomph to your reviews. You wouldn’t want to publish a testimonial without naming those beloved customers, would you?

Think of alt text in that way – it’s helpful, it makes the image easier for search engines to index, and it helps other customers find those delicious meals your restaurant is more than happy to serve.

Content

“Content is King” is a favourite saying when it comes to website development. Leave any web content without optimization, and you can kiss your other uses for web design goodbye. Not only can optimized blog content contribute to generating traffic, boosting e-mail marketing campaigns, and gathering more interest on social media, but also your web pages – the content you really want your customers to find – are what drive sales the most.

How do you get those customers to follow through and make a sale happen? You guessed it – SEO. Look at your website’s overall content appearance. Are you using keywords properly, or jamming the ones you want to target over and over in the first paragraph? Is any of the content evergreen, or is it being used to get quick links for quick bucks? Speaking of links, are you adding links that matter with the service or product you’re selling, or just stuffing them in without questioning where they’re coming from?

If you answered any of the second option in the above paragraph, it’s time to really redo your site’s SEO.

Local Search

Suppose your company can only serve people who live within the city you’re located in. You really want to keep your brand and identity strong amidst the competition, both online and offline, and getting people to visit your social media pages helps just as much as handing out business cards. But for some reason you’re not showing up on page 1 on the search engines, nor do you have many followers.

Why? Maybe it’s because you’re not adding SEO to your website or telling Google you even have social media. Ergo, you’re not standing out amidst the local competition – in fact, you’re not being found, period.

Experience

What is about the best websites you’ve visited that makes you return to it time and again? Chances are it’s not only because of one single thing, but rather an overall experience. If the website is easy to use, it’s easy to find what you’re looking for, the content is valuable, and the time it took to find it on Google was immediate, it’s because the website has been optimized properly – thus adding to a more positive experience for site visitors.

If you’re concerned about making your website easier to find and more valuable to your customer base, but have no idea where to start when it comes to optimization, contact us at V3 Media for a consultation. SEO and web design are just a few of the many great services we can help you out with!