To make your website SEO friendly, you will also have to focus on the design. This important aspect is looked over, while other components of organic SEO traffic like keywords are focused on. Good design with readable text ensures that users stay on your website longer.
Google and other search engines detect this, and your page will rank lower if users are leaving it rapidly. Read ahead to find out the design principles that can make your website appealing to users.
Understanding the role of design in SEO is helpful before you outsource graphic design, unless you outsource to a design subscription like us, because we understand SEO infinitely more than the average design firm.
Table of Contents
Fonts and Typography
Good typography can make a huge difference to your website and bring it substantial traffic. The readability of a font can directly affect whether your customers stay on your website for long.
Many fonts look visually pleasing but may not be the best for your website or application. This is because these fonts were not designed to be a part of Web 2.0 in the first place. Read ahead to find out why some fonts do better on your website than others.
History of Fonts
It is said that language tends to react to the technology that represents them, and the used tools form fonts. The language itself tends to undergo a change when fonts do.
For instance, the early Cretan pictographs were inscribed on rocks, and the typography evolved to suit the tools used.
(Source : Google Images)
The modern alphabet that we use today has emerged largely from the bottom of the Trajan’s Column in Rome and the Carolingian Miniscule, which are the scribes’ standardized letters in the 19th century. Each was written using a different tool on different media, and this influenced the fonts.
With the invention of printing technology, printers used a method called punch cutting to create their letters. Garamond was one such font born of punch cutting.
(Source : Google Images)
Garamond was used to print evenly on paper for a sophisticated look. With this, other popular fonts like Baskerville and Helvetica were invented. These looked great on paper but did not keep up with the technological change as computers were invented.
Fonts for the Screen
As computers came to be used for reading, the font Georgia was created for the screen. It remains one of the most readable fonts to date. This is because Georgia has a good x-height. This is the height of the lower-case x.
(Source : Google Images)
This height tends to determine the height of other letters like e and gives them ample space to be read easily. This is a great option for pixellated screens.
Why Should You Use Fonts Made for the Screen?
Garamond is a sophisticated font with an excellent modulated stroke and evenly spaced letters. You can find this font today on Google font library and even Adobe Typekit. However, for SEO purposes, you may want to avoid these and other old fonts.
While they look excellent on high-resolution screens, you cannot be guaranteed that your user will always use this technology. On screens with lower resolution, Garamond and similar fonts will be pixelated and not very readable.
It is hence best to stick to computer fonts like Georgia that were made for the screen. With this, the flat design looks excellent on most screens today.
Design and SEO
For better ranking on Google, users can use the right keywords in the URL and title. However, the structure of a website and its design may be a key way to bring the user to stay longer. Here are the two elements of design you can keep in mind to achieve better SEO.
Proportion
Good proportions can make your website look well-designed and beautiful. It is better to use proportions of 3:4 or 2:3 as they tend to be more attractive.
For instance, you may be using the Bootstrap CSS Framework to complete your design. This framework has 12 columns, and you can easily divide it into 3:4 or 2:3 sections for a better design.
This can be seen in the logo of MailChimp, which has been designed proportionally. The chimp’s head and his belly are designed to be just 3/4th the size of its body.
(Source : Google Images)
You can use the same logic for digital type-sizes as well. Simply divide each type of size by 0.75 to get the next progression. Using this progressive type-size range can make all your font look aesthetic. Make sure to make the design look great for the given interface size, which may be for a PC, an IOS 5, or other.
Composition
People often read from left to right and from top to down in the western world. This is called the reading direction that defines the focal area of the composition.
Design Principles in SEO
By using the proportion and composition together, you can work on your business’s objectives by making the consumer look at just the information you want them to look at. These are the design principles that are relevant to any interactive projects you may have.
Dominance and White Space
This is the area where the most relevant content on the page appears. It needs to be set in the right proportions and can use enough white space around it to assert its importance.
Similarity
The entire website or page needs to look like a cohesive whole in design. This rids the page of any clutter and makes it visually appealing. To ensure this, similar textures and line weights can be used throughout the page. Plus, to boost Google SEO, you need to incorporate relevant keywords and meta tags strategically in your webpages.
This is done well on an IOS interface where simple geometric shapes with a similar line weight are used to produce a cohesive screen.
Repetition
This is crucial for good design as it brings about a rhythm that sets apart similar objects. For instance, the Twitter Feed is formatted in the same rhythm so that it falls within the same category just by design.
(Source : Google Images)
Different Textures
It may be employed to differentiate between buttons and typography. Every font type and size is a texture on its own. The texture used must be in sync with the principles of similarity and repetition for a uniform page.
Direction and Alignment
You may want to design the page so that the user’s eye moves from the left of the page to the right. It then moves from up to down. It is the way the eye travels. Aligning the content defines the area of your page along an imaginary line.
Contrast
Another factor to consider is contrast. It is relevant to tiny details on the page, including icons. This contrast would make an icon brighter when your cursor lands on it. It shows the user that the icon is clickable.
Endnotes
With all of the above design principles and elements in mind, your website’s reader is persuaded to stay and consider the visually appealing content. It makes it rank better on search engines like Google and makes it SEO friendly.
