The design & layout of your website is very important when it comes to having good search engine optimization. We will discuss how design and layout should look and what the guidelines are. Also we will cover the best practices to implement to make sure that it is in line with requirements and, most importantly, search engine friendly.

What is SEO Design & Layout?

First, design & layout is the overall look and feel of the website. It is also called the user interface (UI). It includes images, videos, design and content. All of these are an integral part of the overall look and feel. There are 3 parts of the website: From top to bottom they are the header, body, and footer.

What are Good SEO Design Guidelines?

Being responsive is important. This term is tricky, because you'd expect it to mean how quick it responds to user interaction. While that is an important factor to SEO, responsive actually means it displays the correctly sized layout depending on if the user is browsing on a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile device. 

This is extremely critical to SEO today and Google takes this seriously. So seriously, in fact, that Google weighs your site's mobile design more importantly than the desktop when determining your authority.

Next, make it spacious. A cluttered website looks awful to users and creates a poor experience. 

This is not like a newspaper where everything needs to be crammed together to fit on a small sheet; whitespace on a screen is a free resource. It also allows you to better focus users' attention on specific elements of the page.

Also, simplify your website’s navigation. Don't make it a confusing maze for users to find what they are seeking. Display links to your most popular content on the header menu of your home page. It should be very clear and very simple so that a user will easily find the information they want.

Use relevant images and use them judiciously. High quality images that have been optimized for both file and screen size are best and you want to make sure to only use images that are relevant to the nearby page content.

Keep your font types and sizes consistent. Try to limit how many different styles are used on the page. It helps with good organization and information structure to use Header 1 once per page, followed by up to five Header 2 tags. You can use Header 3s more aggressively and most of your content will naturally be wrapped in paragraph tags.

Finally, it must be stressed again to make the page spacious. Keep the page clean and clutter free. This is a critical element along with keeping design and content user friendly.

What are Best Web Design Practices for SEO?

• Responsive design consistent with all types of device

• Clean crisp logo at the top left of the page

• Menu bar should be on the top right or center

• Drop down bars clearly laying out appropriate links (The links have to be very clear and easy to view, making sure that they are appropriately sized for each device. It is frustrating for users when they try to click on one link and another link that is too close gets mistakenly clicked.)

• Important elements or links should be more easily found at the top

• Content should flow like a story

• High quality images.  Use clear images that are the same dimensions so that they line up with one another neatly

• Social media widgets with links should be found clearly laid out in the footer 

• The footer is a good place to list less popular links such as privacy policies, disclaimers, terms, or other services

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