Tips for Designing an SEO-Friendly Website
While there are several ways to market a website, SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the best and most impactful ways for visitors to organically discover a business or individual online. SEO is the process of strengthening a website so it performs better in search engines. When people search for words or phrases related to your business, you want them to find your website. By leveraging SEO best practices, you can increase your chances of appearing at the top of their search results.
Why is SEO Important?
Whether you’re designing a website for yourself or a client, learning SEO is important. Once you’ve mastered both SEO and web design, you can offer more varied services to clients and stand out as a professional web designer. You can also use SEO to grow your own business, marketing your skills to people searching for experts like you.
The great thing about SEO is that it doesn’t just help you reach people—it helps you reach potential customers. By optimizing for SEO, you can surface your website to people actively searching for the products, services, or content you’re marketing. Plus, SEO is an unpaid marketing channel, so you can achieve targeted reach without spending a dime.
Understand SEO basics
Search engines are only as good as the information they recommend. They want to help people find content that’s relevant, helpful, and trustworthy. So when optimizing for SEO, your goal is to show search engines your website is worth recommending.
There are three key components of search engine optimization:
On-page SEO
The content on your website should be informative. It should answer questions, solve problems, and demonstrate expertise using language most people can understand. By thoughtfully targeting keywords, properly structuring content, and adding descriptive meta tags, you can help search engines and potential customers understand what they’ll find on your website.
Off-page SEO
If your website is helpful and trustworthy, people should want to link to it. By connecting with thought leaders in your industry, you can encourage authorities in the space to link to your website. You can also use off-site marketing channels, like social media and guest posts, to raise the profile of your business and generate brand awareness.
Technical SEO
Once people find your website, it should be user-friendly. It should load quickly, look good on different devices, and be designed accessibly so a broad audience can enjoy it. By structuring your website thoughtfully, you can help browsers and search engines quickly load and process it. You can also leverage responsive design and accessibility best practices to create a great on-site experience.
Search engine optimization should never come at the cost of user experience. After all, SEO is a marketing channel. It can help people find your website, but you have to deliver something beautiful and functional once they’re there. To master SEO, you should know how to incorporate keywords without making content less readable and when to adapt best practices that don’t serve your visitors.
Conduct keyword research
SEO starts with keyword research. To help people find your website, you need to understand what they’re searching for.
Create a list of keywords related to your business. Brainstorm words that describe your product, brand, industry, and competitors. Channel your customers: who are they, what problems and questions do they have, and how do they phrase things?
Using keyword research tools, narrow down your list and decide which keywords to target. Look for keywords with high search volume and low keyword competition—meaning, keywords that are popular and easy to win. These goals are often mutually exclusive. General head keywords (“web design”) reach lots of people but are tough to rank for. Niche long-tail keywords (“affordable web design services”) reach fewer people but can be easier to win.
A well-rounded keyword strategy balances both of these goals. You want your content to reach the broadest audience possible—without getting lost in pages of search results.
Master on-page SEO
If keyword research is about inspiration, on-page SEO is about execution. Now that you know what content to create, you want to ensure people find it.
Use your keyword strategy to optimize your website. Clarify which keywords each page should target, and add them to key areas, like page titles, SEO titles and descriptions, and headings. Sprinkle them throughout your writing and check your keyword density. Instead of stuffing your content with keywords, aim for a keyword density of 2% to 3%. That means for every 100 words, the keyword comes up two or three times.
It’s also important that your content is structured properly. Write clean URL slugs, add descriptive file names and alt text to images, and thoughtfully use elements, like headings to clarify on-page hierarchy. These high-impact areas help search engines understand what content is on a page, and they’re great places to weave in keywords when appropriate.
As you optimize each webpage, add internal links (links to relevant on-site content). Take note of key topics you haven’t covered. If there are keywords on your list that aren’t yet mentioned on your website, you can create a content strategy that targets them to further expand your reach.
Invest in off-page SEO
Your SEO strategy can and should extend beyond your website. By encouraging other quality websites to link back to yours, you can show search engines that people find your content valuable.
There are several ways to cultivate backlinks (links from other websites to yours). First, create informative resources people will want to link to. Studies, trend reports, and infographics fit the bill. Then, develop relationships with authorities in your industry. Market your most informative web pages to thought leaders who’ll want to link to them. Find broken links (links that no longer lead to a live webpage) on authoritative websites, and offer yours as replacements. Lastly, provide interviews to journalists looking for relevant expertise.
You can also generate brand awareness by leveraging social media and writing guest posts for other websites. While these marketing tactics may not always lead to backlinks, they can raise the profile of your business and help establish you as a leader in the space.
Optimize for technical SEO
Take your SEO strategy to the next level by vetting your website’s user experience. Ensure your content is easy to access by making your website fast, secure, responsive, accessible, and search engine-friendly.
Check how quickly your website loads, and speed it up by using smaller images, shorter galleries, fewer fonts, and less custom code. Make your website more secure with an SSL certificate. Use responsive design to ensure your website looks great on different devices, and follow accessibility guidelines to create a web experience many people can enjoy.
To make your website more search-engine friendly, take advantage of site maps, robots.txt files, and internal links. These resources help search engines understand the structure of your website, so they can efficiently find and process your content.
Track your SEO performance
Once you’ve implemented your SEO strategy, track your progress. Has your work translated to higher SEO rankings, increased web traffic, and greater revenue?
Use Google Analytics and Squarespace Analytics to gather key data about your website. Check whether pageviews, visits, and unique visitors have increased since optimizing for SEO. Note which referral sources and search keywords drive traffic to your website. Lastly, use conversion rates and engagement metrics to see how your content is performing.
Get even more granular by signing up for Google Search Console. The tool helps track traffic-driving keywords, page-by-page performance, on-site errors, and more.
As search engines change, SEO best practices evolve, so it’s important to monitor your SEO performance over time. Conduct regular SEO audits to ensure your website is up-to-date and optimized, and help clients maintain their growth trajectory by offering these check-ins as a recurring service.
Expand your SEO strategy
Depending on the business you’re marketing, there are some additional SEO strategies you may want to employ.
If the business has a physical location, optimize for local SEO. Include a physical address on the contact page, and add a location page with maps, location pins, and other helpful information. Create a Google My Business page, encourage customers to leave reviews, and target keywords tied to your client’s location.
If the business has a blog, develop a keyword-focused content strategy. When a project comes to a close, leave clients with an SEO checklist to reference as they create and update content.
Make the most of built-in Squarespace features
Every Squarespace website comes with built-in SEO tools, which you can use to optimize your website and improve your SEO performance.
These Squarespace SEO tools include:
Custom SEO fields
Squarespace gives you a range of SEO fields to fill out, making it intuitive to add SEO titles, meta descriptions, and alt text to your (or your client’s) website.
Clean URL slugs
Squarespace automatically generates clean URLs, and it lets you set up default formats to keep blog post slugs consistent.
Automatic site maps
Squarespace automatically generates up-to-date site maps and robots.txt files, so search engines can quickly catalog your website.
SSL certificates
Squarespace websites include free SSL certificates, which improve web security and are accessible via your website’s settings.
Structured data
Squarespace automatically creates structured data, which helps search engines categorize the content on your website. It also generates proper tags for web elements, like headings and images.
Built-in responsive design
Squarespace websites are responsive and mobile-friendly, so they look great on a range of devices.
Custom 404 pages
Squarespace lets you design custom 404 pages, which tell search engines content is no longer there and help visitors understand why it’s gone.
Automatic redirects
Squarespace lets you set up custom URL redirects, and it creates automatic redirects for websites with several domain names.
Rich search results
Squarespace structures product information so search engines can detail product names, images, and prices in search results.
In-depth analytics
Squarespace offers in-depth analytics. The platform also integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, so you can track search data in detail.
Mastering SEO can help you stand out as a web designer. By leveraging on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO, you can expand the reach of every website you build and offer clients a more diverse and expansive suite of services.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from all across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
