Why Web Development and SEO Cannot Live Without Each Other
by Ryan Picardal •
Nowadays, despite the fact that many entrepreneurs and small brands have their own website, several of them still think that this is enough to increment their sales. Yes, great website development is important and a key role for your brand as long as it is effective.
For example, if you open a new restaurant on an empty street, even though your food is amazing, no one will go to your restaurant because they do not know it exists.
On the other hand, what would happen if you open another restaurant on a busy street with sub-par food? Between the two restaurants, which would get more customers?
Easy answer right? Even when the food is not as good, there will still be more customers in the restaurant on the busy street because it has a better location.
This same situation can be applied to a website, but instead of a location, a website would need to be positioned well on a SERP. This is where SEO would step in.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a discipline that consists of the application of a series of techniques on both inside (On-Page) and outside (Off-Page) a certain website. The goal is optimizing its visibility in the organic results of the different search engines.
It is a set of actions focused on improving the position of the website in the search results with the final purpose of increasing the traffic.
Keep in mind that, the higher the position of a website in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) the higher the number of visitors that will inevitably land on that website.
For Example, When a user types the keyword “Italian food in California” into Google, the search engine will offer the user a list of results that talk about Italian food in California organized hierarchically.
The three words the user typed (Italian, food, California) are the words that Google used to find the indexed pages in the database, that best respond to this characteristics.
What is Web Development?
Web development is the direct complement of SEO, and vice versa. They cannot live without each other.
Web development works on the image and presentation not only of your website, but also of your business. Because of this, once you get users to your landing page you want to make sure they stay on your site. For that reason, web development makes sure the website is:
- Visually attractive
- Easy to navigate
- User experience optimized
- Fast Loading
- Responsive
Related: Breaking Down the Best Landing Pages
The better design, the more time users will spend on the website and the higher chance they will come back.
What is Responsiveness?
A responsive website refers to the design of a website and if it is compatible with multiple devices and platforms. An optimized website design is essential to user experience, and a good user experience is key for SEO.
Today, more than 60% of searches are done on mobile devices. With this amount of traffic, Google rewards websites designed for multiple devices through Google’s ranking algorithm with a higher ranking in the search results. A responsive design is more usable and more natural to read.
Related: What Is Mobile First? – A Look at Mobile Speed, UX and The Impact on Performance
Conclusion
Now you understand the importance of web design in SEO, and we have seen that both go hand in hand. If you lack in either web design or SEO, you will either have visits and no sales or you will simply be investing in a very appealing landing page with no traffic driven to it.
