Are You Over-Relying On Content Marketing For SEO Purposes? Think Again!

To me, it doesn’t seem surprising at all for marketers to over-rely on content marketing for SEO purposes. Although, content marketing is an important aspect which definitely fills in the foundation for any digital marketing strategy it isn’t the only way out! Web designing is of equal importance.

In today’s digital marketing world, the website has to be at center where all digital rivers run toward. Now several people have questioned me whether web designing can affect rankings in Google search results? Unfortunately, there's no cookie-cutter answer that applies to everyone. We need to consider certain ranking factors that Google uses in its algorithm.

You see, Google cannot actually see your site- and more importantly, it does not have any opinion whether it’s good or bad in terms of design. However, development and designing are such aspects that can have a great deal of impact on your site’s search engine optimization (SEO).

Google Ranking Factors for On-Site Optimization

Over the past two decades, Google has been improving its search engine. And much to my astonishment, the number of details on the Google algorithm’s website seems to have grown substantially. These details include the text and some of the dangling threads of information used to program your site. In fact, a great amount of research has been conducted to determine what these factors are and to what extent Google places value on each element. However, Google tells the world very little about how it ranks websites, at least not directly.

Why new websites rank better?

Everyone is well aware regarding the fact that new websites always end up ranking better in Google. Of course, it has to be because it’s new! Well, that’s not always the case. Several ranking factors play the role. Google loves new whether it’s the content or the entire site itself. Due to which algorithms give preference to this signal, stating that all previously optimized content and other on-site optimization have been retained or even improved.

Apart from this, there are times when businesses relaunch a website and see its ranking as well as its traffic drop. This is mainly due to several efforts being put into the design and not something technical. For example- 301 redirects being performed. We all want to launch a new great looking website, but we shouldn’t ignore the technical elements of SEO in the process.

Home Page Design and Lack of Content

Here one needs to consider minimalist web design techniques. Basically more images, more background white space and less text, this may provide a modern and feel. This can sometimes be a hindrance to ranking on page one of Google. 

As it is said, Google can only read what is on your website which can make it difficult to add needed content to the most important page on your website. Well, it doesn’t mean that a website with very few words can’t rank higher. Which eventually means that it requires a lot of other SEO ranking factors to overcome this obstacle.

UX – A ranking factor

Do you think that Google knows if usability or user experience (UX) of one site is better than another? Ranking Factors and User Experience don’t naturally intertwine. It’s people who prefer using a responsive website. As a result, search engines determined this as an important element. In another word, a happy picture will push you higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Little details count

Although, optimizing a website should not keep a designer from expressing themselves, but understanding some of the basic of SEO can provide great help.

H1 tags are important 

When designing a website, there are a lot of shortcuts to style things in a different way. For example, make use of header tags. H1 tags have this tendency to make text big and bold whereas, H2 tags do the same but slightly smaller and so on down to H6.

Name Your Images and Add Alt Text

Choosing image12564.jpg is not a very SEO friendly name as Google cannot see images, we need to give some useful text to define them. In addition, the Alternative Text tag is the other element that Google relies heavily upon. Describe your images, people!

Do Not Lock Text Inside of Images

 Now have you ever come across the term “editable text”? It simply means that if someone creates an image using a picture or text and saves it the same way then Google won’t be able to read it. The text within the image has no SEO value and it is not readable by Google.

Resize your images 

Content management systems definitely allow us to downsize images to make everything look aesthetically pleasing. But Google does not see this as a smaller image. A 30-MB image will always take a long time to load, especially on a smartphone. So all you need to do is ask your web designers to resize images to at least less than 100%.

Rooney Reeves is a content strategist and a technical blogger associated with web, e-commerce and mobile app Development Company in India. An old hand writer by day and an avid reader by night, she has a vast experience in writing about new products, software design and test-driven methodology. Her write-ups mainly features anything and everything related to the web!
With the true passion for creating compelling content for online and offline media, Rooney has donned multiple hats over the past several years.