Make your website rank first in all search engines
Every website has its own style and content and is addressed to different groups of people, but what makes a site really competitive nowadays is its ability to be indexed by all the search engines in the highest place. This is where SEO comes forth to provide the exposure and user-experience needed in a cost-effective way to optimize your website.
Here are some useful tips that will help your website be easy for both users and search engine robots to understand:
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Keep the layout simple
Make sure the navigation links can be followed by the search engines. Keep the layout simple and clean but packed with design. Trying to accomplish too much can work for the search engine spiders but will ultimately discourage visitors from browsing your site.
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Experiment with different fonts
There are many fonts that look like graphical text but are actually regular text. This means that the search engines will be able to read the text. Try experimenting with different fonts and consider buying font packs. This will allow you to avoid using images and keep your design simple.
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Use mouse-over on images
If the site is image-heavy and needs text, using mouse-overs will be the perfect solution. If this is set up correctly, it can turn an image-heavy site into one that is full of content. To the visitor’s eye, an image will mouse-over to written text. To the search engine spiders, the text will be crawlable and seen as real content.
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Manipulate text with CSS
One of the biggest issues designers face is using plain text (such as the h1 tag) when graphical text is far more attractive. The solution is to use CSS to manipulate how plain text looks so the search engines will be able to pick up the content. It will never look good as graphical text, but it will be a huge improvement over plain text.
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Create a mobile alternative and format it
More people are using mobile devices to browse the Internet. That’s why it’s important to build a site meant to be viewed in mobile format and optimize it for search engines. In addition to creating this site, it is necessary to test how it appears on different devices and platforms so it is formatted correctly.
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Design is good but loading time is bad
Too much design can slow down the loading time of a site. When that happens, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to reduce downloads. Many things can affect loading time from font downloads to plugins for SEO to high-resolution images to scripts.
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Use conversion
Creating a well-designed site can give you a lot of pride. However, the one thing that matters most is conversion. Try out different designs and see which result in more action whether it is e-mail sign-ups, social media shares, or sales. After all, your sales numbers are what matter the most.
Finding the right balance between a stylish design and an optimized website isn’t always an easy task to do and there will be many times when you will have to go back and forth until this balance is achieved. The rest is up to the designer…
