“Should I design my website for humans or search engines?” This dilemma has been around since we at BCW began creating websites in the mid-1990s. The reality then was that the well-designed, graphically attractive websites often didn’t rank as well with search engines as the ugly, single-page, text-only websites.
Even today, there remains a core belief among some that you can’t have an attractive, effective, conversion-producing website that also ranks high with search engines. And this just isn’t the case. Sure, it might take a bit more effort to accomplish both; but in the end, the extra effort is well worth the reward.
So you want a site that looks great and ranks high in search. What do we suggest? First, get your keywords sorted out:
- Create a list of keywords that are important to your company, industry, and offering
- Develop a site map that outlines each page of the website, along with the intended content
- Map your keywords to the pages that support them
Now here is the tricky part: Writing your content. There is an art to gently, naturally, and conversationally incorporating keywords into the copy. Include them in title tags, and H1 and H2 tags. Don’t force it, and don’t do it just for search engines.
If you follow these guidelines, you can have a site that is attractive to the human eye, has a well-defined hierarchy of information, and still ranks well with search engines. Most important, you will have quality traffic, and that traffic will convert—remember, it’s the human who makes the purchases, not the search engine.
Of course, there is a lot more to SEO and high rankings than this. Stay tuned, and we’ll be going into great detail in the future. Please contact us today to learn more about how we can help create that remarkable website that looks great, converts visitors, and is Search Engine friendly.