SEO and web design famously clash at times, as often what is beneficial from an SEO perspective doesn’t necessarily fit with web design, and vice versa. However, it’s been proven that there is a middle ground that can be found where you can have a great looking website that loads quickly, provides useful content to the user and ranks well on search engines. Some of these things crossover between web design and development, however it all comes down to how the website looks and the user experience that it provides. 

We’re here to discuss a few of the ways that you can benefit both the UX and SEO! A great looking website is useless if you can’t drive people to the website through your organic strategy, so get ready to compromise and enjoy the benefits of finding that balance! 

Minimising Code

Firstly, it’s important that the code on the website is minimised from both a web design and SEO perspective. When there is excess code on the website, it will slow it down quite significantly in some cases, although usually more code is required in order to meet the design requirements of the website. Having a quick website that provides users with a good experience is not only important from a conversion perspective, but it’s increasingly an important ranking factor from Google’s perspective, as they want to provide their users with a positive experience. 

So, when the website is being designed, ways to minimise code should be a consideration throughout the process. This is also the case when it comes to things like structured data from the SEO side, like combining different @type’s in order to reduce code wherever possible. Hard coding design features where possible is also advised! 

Avoiding JavaScript

Another important consideration is to avoid JavaScript where possible. JavaScript helps to facilitate great design features, however it can impact SEO progress. Because JavaScript is a more complex coding language, it is more time and resource intensive for Google to crawl the code, and so often, it simply won’t. The main issue here is that if there are JavaScript containers that have content in them, then that also means the content is less likely to be crawled and indexed. Overall, JavaScript can affect the bots’ ability to crawl a website properly and navigate it well, so your website won’t be a priority in terms of who should rank. 

So, whilst avoiding JavaScript completely is usually unrealistic, we’d recommend that you avoid any content containers completely, then keep it to a minimum. Instead, coding in HTML and styling in CSS is advised, as this can be crawled. JavaScript can also cause issues from an accessibility perspective, this isn’t always the case, but it can disrupt things like assistive technologies. Often what is good for accessibility and SEO (with alt tags being just another example) go hand in hand, so if you improve your accessibility, it’s easier for users to navigate, and therefore Google will prioritise your content. 

Image Compression

Something else that needs to be considered when it comes to SEO and web design is image compression. You want great looking images that will showcase your service or product well, however when they’re not compressed, it’s going to really slow the page down. And again a slow website = unhappy Google = poor rankings! So, having a strategy to compress your images is key, whether you work in water damage restoration or high fashion! 

Some CMS’s have built-in image compression tools, like Shopify which usually automatically compresses images to allow for faster page loading. Other CMS like WordPress have plugins you can use, however they can be very code heavy which is a common WordPress issue, so often external compression before uploading onto WordPress is advised. You could also use a content delivery network, which Shopify has built in, to ensure your content loads quickly across the website. 

Having Content In Containers

Now, we know that we’ve been quite harsh on the web design element and telling you what you can’t do from that perspective, so let's go onto the SEO side! Content is and always has been important from an SEO perspective. Things have changed massively over the last decade, as 10 years ago you could plaster thousands of words on a page and likely rank quite well. However, now there is a huge focus on providing users with helpful content that answers questions and really provides value. This being said, in order for Google to associate your website with the keywords you’re wanting to rank for, you need a good amount of content on the page that includes those all important keywords.

Usually, the amount of content that your SEO team wants on the page might not align with the web design elements that have been implemented or are planned. However, there are ways around this. One of the best things you can do is to put content into things like accordions (drop downs), so that the additional information is there if people want it, but it won’t disrupt the design. Of course, you should have all core information and anything really engaging immediately visible. It’s key here that you don’t use JavaScript to build these containers, as then the content is very unlikely to be crawled. 

So, you can keep some content that isn’t vital but has SEO benefits in containers, as it won’t disrupt the design, and you should have a happy middle ground! Choose a good web development agency in Manchester or London and they’ll be able to perfect this balance for you. 

Final Thoughts

When you’re thinking about redesigning your website if you’re not already working with an SEO agency and a web design company, we’d absolutely recommend bringing both on board at the same time. If you don’t, and decide to bring an SEO agency on towards the end of the process, it may require different elements being rebuilt to benefit the SEO, whereas you can avoid that completely and have a collaborative working situation from the beginning. SEO and web design absolutely can go hand in hand, so work hard to strike that balance and you’ll massively benefit.