Work With Experienced Agencies In Both Areas

The first piece of advice we’d recommend is working with experienced agencies for both the SEO and web design areas of your website. An experienced agency will understand that some level of compromise needs to happen when it comes to SEO and web design and know how to make that work. They will be able to effectively communicate to find the right balance to benefit both sides. It’s even better if you can find an SEO or web design company that has a trusted partner they work with and has experience communicating together.

If a web design or SEO agency does both in-house, unless it’s a large company, it usually suggests that they aren’t experts in either. So, we’d advise working with a smaller design agency Manchester or London-based, that understands the importance of SEO and has a team that they work with in order to produce well-optimised websites that drive organic traffic, as well as focusing on user experience.

Focus On Responsive Web Design

Something else you should do when it comes to SEO and web design is to focus on responsive web design. The majority of users now use a mobile device to navigate a website, so you need to focus on ensuring that your website still looks great and is easily navigable within the smaller dimensions of a mobile device. Trying to squeeze a desktop design into mobile dimensions is one of the worst things you can do for the user experience, and Google now prioritises mobile-first indexing. As it’s the priority of Google and the user, it should be the priority of the web design team, too.

Ensuring that your website offers a responsive web design is a significant ranking factor, so without this being considered within the web design, the website is likely to suffer from an SEO perspective. Additionally, the user experience and web design side will also suffer, as ultimately you need to keep people on the website and make their experience with you a positive one. Modern consumers have endless choices in saturated markets, so if your website isn’t responsive, not only will they be less likely to find you in the first place, but they’ll also be unlikely to stick around. The right web development agency Manchester based will be able to help you perfect this.

Content Above The Fold Should Be A Priority

Outdated SEO techniques involve having thousands and thousands of words on a page, however, that isn’t required to rank well anymore. However, this being said, you often do need a decent amount of content on a page in order to demonstrate to Google that this is a good result to show users to help with rankings. It also provides more opportunities to include keyword mentions, again helping with rankings.

So, a good compromise is to focus on the content above the fold (before anyone needs to scroll). Within this section of the content, you should ensure there are sufficient keyword mentions and that you highlight all of the key benefits of whatever it is you’re offering, whether it’s a product or a service. At first glance, the user should be able to find exactly what they’re looking for, which is key from a web design perspective. Then, further down the page, there should be the opportunity to include more content, which is important from an SEO perspective. Using things like drop-downs helps to ensure the user isn’t overwhelmed but if they do want additional information, they can easily find it.

Minimise the Use Of JavaScript

Finally, you should minimise the use of JavaScript wherever possible when it comes to web design. JavaScript can massively impact the crawlability of a website, as it is much more complex for a bot to crawl JavaScript than it is for something like HTML. As it’s more difficult, it requires more work, so often the content just won’t be crawled at all. It’s essential from an SEO perspective that the content on your website can be crawled and indexed, as that’s what helps to demonstrate to Google that you’re providing useful information.