Does Web Design Impact Google Search Performance?
Yes…… not only is web design important, but it can be the make or break factor between good rankings and no rankings. Your web design is critical for several reasons; Firstly, your design is closely related to your site structure and to rank at the top of Google you need a site that is built to comply with Google best practice for elements including, mobile friendliness, load speed, W3C compliance, URL Canonicalisation. Secondly, your design will have a huge affect on the ease with which your visitors can navigate your content, find what they want, buy your products, book services etc. These two factors are measured by Google and if you fall short in one or more regard, it will cost you valuable traffic.
Web Design Factors That Matter:
- Load Speed
- Site Structure
- Mobile Friendliness
- Canonicalisation
- User Engagement
Modern HTML5 websites use minimal html code to generate their content, making them very efficient at loading as fast as possible. Every extra line of code takes longer to download, so reducing the code needed to deliver your content is an essential step towards improving your load speed. Compressing everything you can will also have a big impact. Typically, images are data heavy so again, it’s a quick win to crush your image sizes as much as you can and gzip your site to let it load faster. CDN network delivery is a common way to decrease load speed. As a target, aim to score 80 – 85 / 100 using Google load speed tool on both mobile and desktop tests.
Mobile & Responsive Design
Over 50% of all online searches are carried out on smartphones and tablets. If your website isn’t mobile friendly then you will rank lower in Google, instantly missing out on over half of your potential customers. Mobile compatibility isn’t difficult to deliver. (Bedford SEO Company DeehoSEO will make your site mobile friendly for less than you think) The main criteria is to display your content on small screens so that users don’t need to zoom in to read it, and to make sure that your navigation links are not too close together for touchscreen users to use easily. Google’s mobile friendly test tool will highlight issues and show you how to fix them.