Businesses usually want their sites to look beautiful and appealing. They hire teams to develop themes, choose colors and fonts, make photos, etc. And yet, the website may rank really low, even if it looks perfectly beautiful.
Interestingly enough, experienced web users do not pay much attention to the beauty of websites anymore. Humans may like the color scheme or be excited about the moving visual effects, but today, we are at the stage of estimating business websites by their navigation, the amount of useful information, and functionality.
Search engines never estimate the “beauty” of a website. This is why a visually ugly website can perfectly meet the SEO requirements and have high rankings, and vice versa.
Different sites in different niches follow their own design trends. Websites selling software technologies want to look sleek and polished, sites selling high-quality cosmetics want to look fresh or luxurious, online casinos with No Deposit bonuses in Canada want to look entertaining and at the same time reliable, and platforms selling all kinds of stuff want simple design but efficient navigation, etc. Sites may even follow fashion trends, like choosing colors according to the color trend by Pantone.
However, search engines estimate websites according to a huge list of criteria, and design is one of the important segments that has its own list. Some of the design parameters evaluated by search engines include:
- unique or customized website design
- page layout
- search bar
- intuitive and user-friendly navigation around the platform
- link logo to the Homepage
- compatibility of design with mobile devices and different screens
- menu in the footer of the page, and add Scroll back to the top button, etc.
- sitemap available
Search engines have two main criteria for website assessment – they simultaneously track sites for spam, and check for optimization. Anything that looks like spam or low quality, makes the website drop in its position, while optimization enhances the site’s reputation within the search engines.
Does Your Site Have This: Checklist for a Perfect Website Design
As it has been already mentioned, sometimes ugly websites are perfect for SEO, but not convenient for human users; beautiful websites that are easy to use, on the other hand, can be hard to find due to lack of optimization. As a result, a perfect website design should be optimized both for robots and humans.
Below are 13 cases when a business website may lack a small but important design element, and at the same time, this is a checklist for making a website’s design 13 steps closer to perfection and being loved by search engines.
- a proper color scheme that has around four colors, does not strain the eyes, and makes the text easy to read, both in menus and on pages
- texts and images follow a comprehensive layout that does not confuse the reader
- pages load quickly, including pictures
- all pages work properly in desktop and mobile versions and adapt to different screen sizes
- all pages follow the same style, including the header and logo
- a comprehensive logo in the upper part of the page which is clickable and links to the homepage
- all the major elements are intuitively easy to find – logo and contacts in the header, search bar on top of the page, the menu on top and in the footer, sitemap in the footer, license information and additional links, etc.
- the links are highlighted when hovering
- the logo matches the icon on the tab
- highlighted action buttons that are easy to find
- a comprehensive menu that includes standard pages like About, Contact, T&C, etc.
- comprehensive 404 page, in the same style, and with a search bar added
- all links are clickable, all content elements are available, all buttons are actionable, design elements do not freak out when hovering, and few ads or pop-ups
These design criteria are very easy to meet, they should be met step by step and they make websites scannable for both robots and humans. However, not adding those simple design elements immediately makes the site look low-quality and unreliable, and even the most stylish visuals won’t save the day.
Final Thoughts
Meeting all SEO requirements is hard but possible, but meeting the SEO-friendly design elements is way easier and faster. High-quality navigation and functioning design work better for SEO than “beautiful” but useless design.