Link, Content, Design – Do they add value to your SEO?
If web design is the heart of website success, we can term SEO as the brain of website success. Normally, a website comes for optimization once the design part gets completed. At this point, the website is raw, without any SEO stuff.
The burden of optimization worsens things for both SEOs and designers. SEOs need to optimize the visually-compelling website. Designers need to make phenomenal modifications in it to achieve higher ranking in SERPs.
To avoid all these circumstances, it is better if SEO and design get married in the initial phases itself. Better if they evolve together into a well-optimized and well-designed website.
SEO is not an old snake oil with stereotypical strategies or straitjacket methodologies. It is a fast growing, ever-changing ‘happening’ field in the world wide web. Search Engine ranking algorithms change every now and then so much so that one can easily forget about meta tag optimization, keyword stuffing etc.
In such a state of flux, does Link, Design and Content deliver any value to a website? If they do, should web design and SEO work together to achieve this? The answer is a big YES!
Make Links Carry Value
No more “click here” and “learn more” links will be seen in a website if SEOs and Designers work together. When we try to go with terms like “click here” and “learn more” for making a clickable anchor text, we lose vital keyword rich anchor texts in internal navigation / internal linking.
Make Design Deliver Value
The word “Link Baiting” is not for SEO territory alone. It can even be used by designers. Websites with great design can easily catch people’s attention and would gain more backlinks from bloggers. On the other hand, you can design a great site, validate with CSS, submit to CSS galleries and gain even more link backs.
Make Content Speak Value
Make search engine bots read your content much earlier. This can be done using ”source ordered content” which incorporates placing content as close to the beginning of the page as possible and using CSS to display page elements where they “belong”. It allows you to give prominence to keyword-optimized sections of your site and thus helps you achieve better rankings for optimized keywords.
Last but not the least, let’s finish up with the footer part.
Footer Not Only to Rest:
Create a compelling footer. Designers, don’t forget to leave your link. SEOs don’t forget to include your keywords!
For instance, instead of going for site created by “Dot Com Infoway” you can go with Site Created by “Dot Com Infoway – Web Design Company”. Once you design a few sites with your keyword-rich attribution links, change the wording. It doesn’t need to be drastically different, but make some variations. Do this periodically.
Simple things can help us achieve bigger targets. Though the above tips do not show the way to any phenomenal SEO or design strategy, they sure will help you create a well-optimized website with near-perfect SEO and design elements.
