Symbiotically Combining SEO and Web Design, Part 1

It’s a common problem for internet marketing pros on either end of the spectrum: Either you have a great-looking site that struggles to perform from an SEO standpoint, or you have a fantastically optimized site from an SEO perspective, but it looks ugly and isn’t engaging to possible clients. These areas can be slightly tougher to optimize simultaneously than you might think, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

At SEO Werkz, we’re here to help. Our web design and SEO services are always carried out in coordination with one another, with each supporting the other in complementary ways. In this two-part blog, we’ll go over some of the tools we can help you use to get both a fantastic-looking site and one that’s fully optimized for back-end SEO.

Webfont

Some of the key tools available to all online marketing pros here are webfonts, of which there are several options and varieties – Google, Fonts.com, Font Deck, Typekit and others all have their own styles. These are great-looking font options that allow your site to look good without sacrificing vital crawlability.

Generally, we’ll use these fonts in coordination with visual elements like banners and calls to action. These will be in image form, surrounded by excellent fonts and various type effects or treatments. By combining these fonts with HTML and CSS, we achieve what’s called “live text” – banners that look fantastic but can also be marked with various tags and updated dynamically, allowing you the best of both worlds.

Understanding Various Requirements

Brands that struggle to combine SEO and web design effectively are often facing a common problem: They have site designers who want the site to look good and SEO pros who want the site to rank well and be crawlable – and their interests aren’t properly aligned.

Fixing this often simply comes down to design and SEO teams having a better understanding of what each side needs to make things work. There are numerous tools out there that can help both sides get what they need, from live text to various solutions like mouse-overs and others that allow for both great visuals and strong SEO. Maintaining both click-through rate and user experience is easily possible if both sides of the equation are properly addressed.

Expandable Div

One more great tool that helps combine user experience and SEO is the expandable div, which allows you to present a product image of some kind that’s accompanied by additional information, such as product descriptions, prices and other content. Not only does this feature make a given product page far more accessible to users, it also offers significantly more long-tail text for Google to index – this is a huge factor for SEO. Rather than just having stand-alone images that only offer limited alt-text for Google and other engines to crawl, use expandable divs to both increase your visual appeal and make your pages more crawlable.

For more on how we can help you combine a great-looking site with high-quality SEO, or to learn about any of our other services, speak to the staff at SEO Werkz today.