A lot of businesses that come to us like to think that our services live independently of each other, but when it comes to digital marketing, such is not the case. Examine the relationship between web design and SEO for example. We could create highly evocative content for your products, but if your website isn’t functional, then your visitors are going to exit before they even make it to the second paragraph. On the flip side, we could build you a beautiful, responsive website, but if the content on the site isn’t legible, then your visitors will leave just as quickly as if you had had a sub-par website. Web design is the ideal ying to SEO’s yang. In order to find success online, you’ll need to find harmony between the two factors.
Determining the ROI of the Web Design and SEO Partnership
Determining the ROI of your website’s design is easy if you know what you’re looking for. At Snap, we typically value conversions over traffic. And while that model isn’t applicable to all websites, it’s a good starting point. To determine the ROI of your website, you’ll need to know your site’s monthly search volume, click through rate, visits, and conversion rate. Once you know all four of those metrics, you can use the below formula to determine your site’s ROI.
Search Volume x Click Through Rate = Visits
Visits x Conversion Rate = Leads
(Leads x Closing Rate)x(Price – Delivery Costs) = Web Design ROI
This formula may seem simple, but the execution is anything but. Creating a fully integrated web design that is capable of supporting a thorough SEO strategy can be a challenge. Because while your eyes may be leading you towards a certain design, your brain is counseling you to choose a completely different path to support your content needs. Luckily, an experienced SEO strategist partnered with a veteran web designer can easily find the perfect balance between form and function.
Outside of the above equation, there are five factors that generally help us to evaluate the ROI of a website. It is these five factors that differentiate a $15,000 website from a $25,000 website. Those five factors being conversion rate, closing rate, search volume, leads, and profit. If a website is only beautiful on the surface but can’t sustain consumer interaction, then the site isn’t worth much. Like we said, there needs to be a balance between form and function.
The Most Obvious Disconnects Between Web Design and SEO
While some SEO or web design blunders may be hard to spot on the surface, others are not. Working in digital marketing, we spend a lot of time looking at both good and bad websites; here are five of the most obvious signs that we see that tell us that a website isn’t merging SEO and web design like it should.
Inappropriate naming or messaging
If your website’s name doesn’t match its purpose or isn’t supported by your company’s messaging or branding, consumers are going to struggle to connect with your audience. But within your messaging you’ll need to utilize keywords to ensure that your content is being seen. Try adding in targeted keywords in places like product descriptions and service pages for the most impactful results.
A sitemap that isn’t optimized for SEO
A sitemap is one of your website’s most important assets. Search engines crawl sites based on the order set forth in the site map, meaning that if your site is structured in a way that makes it hard for a search engine to crawl then your data will be rendered almost useless. You never want to structure your site in a way that puts higher valued pages lower in your site’s hierarchy. Any more than three layers of child pages and search engines will struggle to assess your content. Always try to keep your key service pages as parent pages.
A design that doesn’t support long-form content
Having a beautiful website is great, but if your beautiful design can’t support long-form content then you’ve got a big problem. The most impactful content pieces can range anywhere from 800-2,000 words. You need to ensure that your site’s design is ready for that length. You can come to a compromise with content length by using tactics such as show-hides and infinites scrolls.
A slow site speed
While image-heavy designs might look nice, if not properly formatted they can drag down your site speed in a big way. You’ll need to compress images when possible and look for other opportunities for minimizing your website’s load time. Outside of images, site speed is really more of a development problem and you should talk with your developer to try to find a solution to your slow loading issues.
A site with underwhelming heading tags
We get it, the look of your website is important; but so is its function. And one area where we commonly see people choose form over feature is in their heading tags. Just remember that while you may want your page to look a certain way, you need to do what’s best for search engines. Because at the end of the day, even though a heading may not look perfect, it’s what will set your website apart from the rest when it comes to search engines.
Find the Perfect Web Design and SEO Balance with Snap
The symbiotic relationship between SEO and web design cannot be understated. Without the other, each discipline is kept from reaching its full potential. At Snap, we’ve been building beautifully designed websites that boast advanced SEO strategies from over 13 years. Every day, our team scours the digital world to find new and inventive ways of making our clients’ website’s better. And the hustle doesn’t stop once your site is live. Our SEO team will continue to create content and optimize your digital assets every day as your company grows. There’s no need to wade through the world of SEO and web design alone, our team of experts is ready to lend a hand.