Blog

Other than keyword-optimized content, business owners should also put high regard on their website’s design. Though search engines like Google wouldn’t interpret a webpage the same way as your audience, structuring its design for both Google and your audience will have a huge impact on your rankings. While there are numerous factors to consider, building your website’s design boils down to these vital elements listed down by SEO companies.

 

 

 

Java applets, Flash files, and a lot of other non-text content will often be ignored, even devalued, by Google’s crawlers. All the important content in your website should be in HTML text format, to ensure that these words and phrases will be visible both to search engines and to your visitors.

 

This does not mean, however, you can ignore other forms of content, including photos and videos. Remember to add alt text for all your images, and assign those in gif, jpg, or png format with alt attributes to give search engines an accurate text description of the image. For video and audio content, add a transcript, especially if you meant for the words and phrases to be indexed by the search engine crawlers.

 

 

Search engine crawlers will also look for links to find the content they are supposed to index in the first place. This is when a crawlable link structure becomes vital, as it enables these crawlers to browse the pathways of your website and aid them in finding all the pages in your site. Most websites, on the other hand, make the mistake of structuring their websites in a way that hinders access for search engines, thus reducing their chances of a higher ranking.

 

 

This holds true for websites that have already existed for a while and are being redesigned. Old pages on your website shouldn’t be deleted or lost, especially if this ranked well for a particular keyword, but should be redirected into the new one. Once search engine crawlers see that your old page no longer exists, they will ultimately remove it from search results, losing all the referral and organic search traffic you gained.

 

 

With a growing number of people accessing the internet on their mobile phones, the importance of having a responsive web design cannot be understated. In a nutshell, responsive design caters the same experience to different visitors using different devices. You can have a responsive web design, along with the aforementioned elements, with help from an SEO company in Indianapolis, like MyNetWire.

 

Not too long ago, something online marketers refer to as “Mobilegeddon” happened. Google, the world’s largest search engine rolled out an update, which put websites that aren’t mobile-friendly in very hot water. This is because, according to Search Engine Journal, mobile searches surpassed desktop-only searches for the first time ever. It could be that today’s users are always on the go or that everybody is on their smartphones but if there’s one thing this proves, it’s that businesses in Indianapolis should invest in mobile-friendly design. If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, now is the right time to get in touch with a web design company. Before you do, however, here are some basic tips.

 

 

Tip # 1: Focus on user’s experience. No matter how awesome your website looks, it’s not going to do you any good if it doesn’t work the way your users expect. Search engines have long since emphasized the importance of user experience as a ranking metric. Focus on usability first before working on your site’s aesthetics. Web design is, after all, more than just the look. Still, your site’s appearance is what will draw your customers in. Make sure that it’s both usable and visually pleasing.

 

Tip # 2: Use one mobile-responsive website. Some people think it’s smart to create two websites – one for the mobile users and another one for desktop users. That means more traffic, right? Web design experts in Indianapolis from reputable companies like MyNetWire will disagree. You’re actually splitting up traffic and worse; search engines see them as duplicates, which can also get you penalized. Instead of doing this, you can just use one mobile-responsive website. Not only will this be more convenient for tracking your progress but it is often much cheaper to design just one site.

 

Tip # 3: Test out your new website. A lot could go wrong after the relaunch of your new website, especially if it underwent major changes, like a redesign. It’s every marketer’s nightmare to suddenly find that their website has dropped down significantly in rank. To avoid this, you should always thoroughly test every aspect from content to code of your website before launching it again. Things could have shuffled or changed during the redesign. Also, don’t forget to try browsing your website on as many kinds of mobile devices as you can. This way, you’ll get to resolve a problem before it ends up costing you.

 

Bounce rate is one of the many factors that search engines use to rank a website. Look into your Google analytics and check your bounce rate. The number tells the percentage of users who view a page in your site and hit close or back button right away without ever engaging or even browsing through its other pages.

 

 

While technical glitches and minor clicking errors do contribute to bounce rates, a high rate is often a good indicator that a website is failing to provide a satisfying user experience. This means that if your website has a bounce rate of 60%, for example, it will need some fixing.

 

Although there’s no foolproof way to maintain a healthy bounce rate, making the following changes can get your visitors to stay longer, explore your website and even convert.

 

 

 

 

If implemented, the above tips will help optimize user experience and improve your site’s visitor retention rate. If you need help from website design professionals in Indianapolis, firms like My Net Wire would be glad to help you.