subject: Using SEO to guide page design [print this page] Using SEO to guide page design Using SEO to guide page design
Search engine optimisation experts frequently talk about how web design affects SEO, but they only rarely talk about things the other way around. SEO can have a big effect on your site's design, most often improving it for the better. Examining your site design through the eyes of an SEO expert can bring benefits far beyond an improved relationship with the search engines. It can actually make your site a lot more readable.
The way you lay out your pages has a huge affect on how they are read. You might have extremely finely-tuned your optimisation, but if your pages aren't pleasing to the eye, your site's users are just going to turn away. Because of this, many SEO experts tend to develop an eye for design as well, and this is one of the many reasons to hire an SEO company for your site's optimisation. You can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. If you're optimising your site, it's a good idea to read up on SEO and site design.
SEO design is built around information flow One of the major factors in SEO-based design is the flow of information. The communication between websites and the search engines is based in the position and retrieval of words. There's a certain logic built into the system. If, for example, your keyword is 'dogs', but your page has a few mentions of the word 'puppies,' the search engines are going to take this into account. This affects even the way a site is structured. If the above page has a link to a page on dog food, the search engines are going to consider this relevant.
This logical flow of information should be taken into account in your website's design. Relevant words should be positioned closely together so that the search engines don't have to work very hard to link them. Study user scan patterns for good design Many SEO companies have invested in testing the way internet users scan pages. This information has proved incredibly helpful in developing SEO design, because it has revealed how most internet users treat web pages. The results aren't what most people expect.
Internet users read pages very differently to the way a person normally reads something in hard copy. First of all, studies have shown that rather than reading through a page line by line, internet users tend to scan the entire page at first, their eyes moving in a zig-zag pattern. This enables them to take in the entire page in around three seconds, and it means that the way web pages present information has to be very different from printed pages.
Although SEO design is primarily about information, aesthetics are still important. Design for SEO is quite different to design from a web designer's point of view, but many aspects are the same. The important thing is to leave enough room on your pages for information to come across efficiently. A crowded page is just as displeasing to the mind as it is to the eye.
