Creating a website or trying to organize its redesign is not an easy task; especially when it has to be as beautiful as it is functional in terms of ranking and research in order to be found by search engines.

Design for an aesthetic website

One of the first aspects we think of when creating a website is probably its aesthetic. We want to create a modern website which uses the latest trends in design and that is focused on the user experience. Some websites consist only of a landing page with a single image or a parallax effect with all of the site’s information on that page. Of course, those websites are a real pleasure to the eye and they definitely bring something new for their audience. Some of them are really creative and they are sometimes closer to a form of art than a simple web design and that’s what makes them so innovative and effective.
These websites can really affect the user, offering a unique experience to remember and that shows off all the strengths of web design. But what good is creating a website with a stunning and original design if it cannot be indexed by Google and if your potential customers can’t find it?

SEO for best search results

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the set of rules to follow so a search engine like Google can find, index, and give good rankings to the pages of a website. Doing SEO allows people who are searching for terms relevant to your business to find you in the search engine results. How to do SEO well is the subject of a whole industry of blog posts, white papers, and presentations, but at the level of what a website visitor sees it includes making good use of keywords, creating and writing original content, and integrated title tags and META descriptions. This means that SEO primarily focusses on the text, which the search engines can read, rather than the imagery that works so well for people but that search engines cannot interpret. It also requires avoiding Flash that robots are unable to read or websites with a single page that do not create enough content to rank the website well.
Some may argue that SEO leaves few places for visual creativity and some web designers may even feel limited in their art and their desire for originality by the need to follow SEO’s rules. However, proper use of SEO does not mean we should settle for minimalist websites where only text counts and that don’t bring much to the user. On the contrary, we should keep creativity and originality because it is often a design that entices visitors to stay on a web page and not only the content. SEO is not going to be successful without web design and vice versa.

How to combine them?

To create a website that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is efficient and search-engine friendly, we must be able to combine web design and SEO effectively. SEO will allow users to easily find a web page and web design will be one of the main reasons that will make a user stay on the page. That’s why we need to find ways to keep creativity without hurting SEO and using SEO without losing our originality. Here are all the problems or the limits you might encounter when trying to combine both and also their solutions!

For SEO on the one hand:

  • You might think design is all about pictures and aesthetic so there’s no use for you. Actually you need to use design to make your SEO work! When you try to add hierarchy to your website using headings, titles and sub-titles, they all need to be readable to help your visitors find what they want and that’s all about design; don’t forget that SEO is all about the people visiting the site, so you still have to make your headlines exciting, intriguing, or funny enough that people will want to read the rest of a page
  • As we have already said, SEO is primarily about text and keywords but that doesn’t mean you have to use keyword stuffing or irrelevant keywords. Not only will search engines penalise you but it’s also very bad for your web design as there will just be useless text that will take up space on your page. Instead, write great and interesting content with a few keywords and no grammar mistakes!
  • You might think that if you leave too much space for design and images it will hurt your SEO? There are actually some techniques you can use to give more space to pictures or other content without having to remove your copy. For example, think about mouse-over or click effects that will allow you to keep your content but make it only visible when you click or hover your mouse over it.
  • In the same vein and if you’re afraid to lose your text, you can use expandable <div>s that will let you keep your text without having to display it directly on the page: this is a good way to bring more white space into your design
  • Don’t think you cannot make your content interesting without using text. There are a lot of other types of content you can use to attract visitors and to make your website more visually appealing. Don’t just write blog posts but include videos, articles or infographics that arouse the interest of visitors.
  • Social media need to be highlighted on your website and there’s no better way than using a bit of design to do that. Social media buttons are important points on a website, especially since they are taken into account by search engines and because they are a great way of increasing your social following. You need to include them in your website and good web design can help you to get the most out of them.

It’s important to understand that design shouldn’t be a problem for your SEO.  And all the points mentioned above are crucial for your website and they perfectly fit with the logic of web design.

Web design on the other hand:

Don’t feel limited by SEO if you want to be creative; a lot of design trends can be coupled with search engine optimisation and even if you feel it might be a problem, here are some tips that can help you.

  • There’s a myth that using parallax effects on a website is not compatible with SEO. If you do want to use parallax for your website, the key is to not limit yourself in one page but add links that will take visitors to other pages where they can find more detailed information. This will allow you to create both an experience that excites your users and helps them get the most from your content
  • If Flash doesn’t work for SEO it doesn’t mean you cannot be creative at all! Think about using CSS3 and HTML5 that will allow you to create really beautiful and imaginative websites with a lot of the things that Flash lets you be creative with, such as animations. Even the humble animated GIF can bring life to a website if it is used well (like it is here on…)
  • SEO doesn’t mean losing any use of videos, audio or images for a web designer! All of them can still be used on an optimised website. In fact you just need to find a way to make them visible to robots. For that, use alt tags, video transcriptions, and captions. The great thing about these is that they’re also useful for website visitors too.
  • When web designers want to create something more visual they will add beautiful images, especially on the landing page. There’s nothing wrong with that but they will increase the load time and that’s really bad – not just for SEO but also for the user experience.  Solution: Before adding images on your website, make sure they are optimised for the web with a good resolution, that’s the right size for where they are used instead of the largest possible, and a good file size

Conclusion

SEO and Web design should be consistent with each other and they must be conceived and designed together to create an aesthetic and effective website. It might look like there are difficulties in bringing them together, but really there are no more excuses if you think it’s impossible to create a website that’s search-engine friendly and creative!
 
And if you prefer pictures to words here's an infographic on how to make design and SEO work together !