Design A Professional Website People Can Actually Find On Search Results (SEO)

In this article I will be going over common pitfalls of designing your own website and how to get the best results with search engines (also known as SEO, Search Engine Optimization). After all, once you design and build the website you want people to be able to actually find it on search engines like Google, Bing, and Siri.

Designing your own site may start out fun, however may quickly get out of hand. You could design a perfectly executed site only to find it doesn’t get seen by anyone because it doesn’t come up on search engines. Before you dive into creating your own website  take time to learn some fundamentals of website design to get you the best results with your efforts and get your website ranked on search engines. There will be more articles to follow, however this is an important first step in design.

Let’s get started creating a great website for you!

The first step is the most important, choosing a website editor. Here’s a quick note for those of you who have a website you don’t care for and maybe on the fence about starting over…

If you have made the mistake of choosing a website editor you don’t like, or hosting service, or had a website designed which isn’t doing you any good my advice is to make a change regardless of the time and cost investment you have in your current site. It will not get better, and the longer you wait the more traction you loose by not fixing the issue now. Don’t loose more business just because you don’t want to bother making a change. It’s worth changing your website to grow your business. Everyone looks up info on search engines now and a bad site won’t get you business. Your current customers won’t even be able to find you and will instead find your competitors. No matter the size of your business you can compete with big corporations on search engines!

Very important first step: What is the difference between website editors?

Make sure you are getting a Responsive Website (also known as dynamic website, and mobile friendly website) this will do two very important things for you.

1. A Responsive Website will automatically adjust to allow for the best view depending on what kind of device someone is viewing your website on. For example, when viewing your website on a desktop computer a Responsive Website will have the text and images displayed in a different way than if using a mobile device such as a tablet, iPhone, Note, or a smaller mobile phone.

2. The new search algorithms used by Google heavily weighs your search ranking based off of it being Responsive. You will not be happy with your results if it is not Responsive. 

Next, you will want to find an editor with included content which you like the look of. Something with pictures to get you started, easy to use pre-built sections, and template designs you like. Look for content which looks unique to the image you want to portray. Even if you plan on designing the site from scratch these drag and drop features will save you time and make designing a professional site easy. The templates and pre-built sections you can customize and change around to get it just how you like. They will give you a balanced look and give you fields which are pre-sized and formatted to save you a lot of trouble with spacing, sizing, adding rows and columns. You want to be happy with your final product so look for templates you like the general design of and go from there.

Take into account the information you want displayed on your website. Headings, text, bullet points, images, sketch out some general designs keeping in mind your target audience. Who is going to be visiting your site, your objective with the site, and the information you want to convey is going to make your job a lot easier.

Narrow your options of template sites once you know your general content. Colors and images you can change. Try to choose a template which is going to allow you to display your message in the manor in which it will best be displayed.

Another important design tip, you will want to try and keep scrolling to a minimum without cluttering your site. It’s a balancing act for sure.

Now for a bit of technical advice in the layout your website which is significant for optimizing your page on search engine results. Template sites  with drag and drop editors will use different ways of displaying text. You have the option of Headers and Text Fields. They are read differently to search engines. The Header options are broken down into categories, H1, H2, H3, and so on. You can set the design of each of these to display the size and style of text by default. More importably these will be used for search engines to determine what your page is about.

Good structure with your content will go a long way for getting good results and make your site more user friendly. 

1. For your site’s main Heading Title use a H1 also labeled as “Large Heading” and be sure use descriptive words like your organization name and/or descriptive words about your site rather than something abstract.
2. Then use a H2 “Small Heading” with supportive text. It doesn’t have to be repetitive, however it should be related descriptive text.
   
3. In the next field use a plain text box. The first sentence should include more supportive descriptive text.

Here’s an example: Let’s say the website is for Sally’s Ice Cream Shop. We want to use supportive descriptive text in the beginning of the description which would read something like “Artisan handmade ice-cream store” maybe something about a large variety of flavors or other text related to an ice-cream shop (location, quality, etc). The idea is to use text which differentiates it from a tutorial website on how to make homemade desserts. The search engine looks for supporting text to figure out what the site is all about. Having this supporting text will get you the best results for search engines.

Check out more information about how to be found on Google & how to optimize your Google My Business Listing Here.

Have fun and be creative. Try to design your site with a feeling of your culture and unique persona of your brand image. This will allow your audience to connect with you on an authentic level. It’s proven to get better results turning viewers into customers and clients. Our next Blog Post will discuss more on the topic of designing a unique website which optimizes search engine results and converting viewers into paying customers. 

Thanks for readying & hope you enjoy creating your own website!