Often when designing or redesigning websites, we mostly think about the design and overall aesthetic, and less about the ability for users to find the site, or the overall optimization. What’s the point of a website that looks amazing but can’t be found and isn’t functional? Or even a site that can easily be found but isn’t visually engaging? The whole purpose of a website is for it to be found and for relevant content to be delivered to its visitors. The design and optimization of your website affects your SEO campaign, PPC campaigns, and the overall user experience of your website, reason why you need to makes sure to use a low code development software.  When building or redesigning a website or pages, it’s crucial to incorporate aspects of both SEO and PPC. These tactics should be utilized during the design process and also used for future optimization further down the line. Let’s take a look at some of the most useful SEO and PPC tactics and practices you should apply when creating a new website.

Keywords & Optimization

Keywords are the basic building blocks for your website and are fundamental to SEO and the overall search process. When building your website or even redesigning a few pages, keywords help to map out and structure the content and elements of your site. You want to design your website so that it can be found for queries or searches that your target audience is using when looking for products or services similar to those that you offer (Remember: each page should be targeting only one keyword). With that said, make sure you conduct keyword research in order to find keywords that are the best fit for your website and its individual pages.  According to SEOMoz, search engines measure the ways keywords are used on pages to help determine the “relevance” of a particular document to a query. In most cases, the more specific your keyword selection, the better your chances of ranking based on less competition for those keywords. Below are the main areas in which you want to make sure to utilize your keywords:

• Title tags (place important keywords close to the front of the tag)
• Meta descriptions
• Navigation/Menu items
• Content (this is the heart of SEO)
• URLs
• Headers
• Image File names
• Image Alt Attributes

Crawlability

All SEO experts admit that crawlability is a very important factor when it comes to SEO and rankings for your website. In order for your site to be indexed by Google, Googlebots must be able to crawl your site properly. If your site isn’t crawled and indexed, it wont come up in the SERPs or search engine results pages. According to my friend, who runs Get The Clicks, most of the time, crawl-ability is compromised when sites contain design elements that look great, but the important information that is contained within them can’t be “read” or picked up by the Googlebots. One way to ensure crawlability is by making sure the text on your site can be “read” by Googlebots. Two ways to ensure this are through the use of webfonts and through the use of live text, since the Googlebots can’t read text contained in an image, another tool: I used Legiit to find the best SEO Gigs on any marketplace design. Web fonts are great because you have a selection of various font choices that won’t compromise the crawlability of your site nor the design. With live text, you add text with HTML and CSS, which also ensures crawlability. To double check the crawlability of your website, utilize tools like Google Cache to see exactly what the search engine spiders or Googlebots see when they access your website.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is a tactic that should always be utilized when designing or redesigning a website, or even a page on your site. A/B testing is a good way to measure what’s working and what’s not, which can make a huge difference when it comes to conversions. A/B testing is conducted by driving traffic using paid ads to pages on your site that you want to test. You should create pay-per-click, or PPC ads that link to different versions of each page in order to find out which variation has better conversions.xA/B testing allows you to collect data and gain insight that enables you to make data driven decisions for your website.   A nice rule to be learned from The Digital Swarm when designing for both usability and SEO is to think of each page on the site as a landing page. Each page should provide all of the information that a user is seeking and should let them know where they are and what they should see next. The goal of the website should be to help your clients achieve their goals and help to increase conversions. Here are a few things that are usually tested using A/B testing:

• Headline
• Secondary headline
• Copy
• Testimonials
• Call-to-action text
• Call-to-action buttons
• Links
• Images
• Placing elements above or below the fold

Designing websites and webpages with https://ambient.sg/ is about creativity and the presentation of ideas and information, but it’s important to remember that there are multiple elements that need to come together in order to create a successful website beyond the design. In today’s Internet driven environment, websites not only have to look good but they have to successfully and optimally deliver content and information to users.  Apogee is a partner of HMG Creative and so is Bulldog Digital Media. Together we facilitate clients’ SEO, web design, PPC and other web elements. If you are looking for web design, and want a site that incorporates both design and functionality, don’t hesitate to reach out to HMG.