Although you can adapt a website to make it search engine friendly, it is always better to design or redesign a website with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Essentially, you want to make it easier for search engines to crawl your website. SEO is the basic tool we use to achieve this outcome.
The question remains, why do we want the search engines to crawl our website in the first place? Well here are 10 reasons why designing your websites with search engines in mind is an essential step in the design process:
Higher rankings: If you want any hope of ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) then search engines must be able to crawl your site and determine the topic and relevance of your web pages to visitors’ queries. The more topical and relevant your content, the higher your rankings.
Increased Traffic: The higher your ranking in the SERPs, the more frequently your site is presented to searchers and the more organic traffic is sent to your website.
Greater Brand Exposure: The more visitors that view your site, and the more engaging your content, then the more they share your content across their social networks, and the more brand exposure you achieve.
More Authority/Credibility: The higher your rankings in the SERPs, the more your content is shared across social networks and the more visitors interact with your site, the greater your authority and credibility within the community.
Deep insight: Using analytical packages such as Google Analytics or Clicky, gives you unprecedented insight into visitor behavior. You can access metrics on the regions where they live, the time and days of most activity, how they search and browse, and the technology they use.
Targeted Markets: Deep insight gives you the added power to target select groups of visitors and design a marketing campaign aimed at increasing your market share in niche areas or specific regions. You can also time your campaigns to go out when people are most likely to open your emails.
Increased Conversions: Higher rankings and greater targeted traffic lead to increased conversions, whether that is in sales, inquiries, donations, or subscriptions. Without good rankings in the SERPs and lots of traffic, your website will just flounder in the backwaters of the internet.
Your Competitors Use SEO: Most businesses know that the future is in SEO, so whilst you might not be convinced, undoubtedly your competitors are already on the SEO bandwagon. If you don’t catch up, they will leave you in their dust.
SEO Works: What can we say? SEO just works. If you employ SEO techniques on your website, all things being equal, you will notice an increase in rankings and traffic.