Hello, this is John Locke. Today I want to talk with you for just a few minutes on why
design is such an overlooked, but important aspect of SEO. Does Design Affect SEO? There
are a lot of factors that go into SEO. But the three that really stand out to me as the
three legs of the table that hold up the structure are: high-quality content, a robust and relevant
back link profile, and user experience. Under user experience, I really look at these factors:
the overall design of the site, the site speed, how easy it is for people to find what it
is that they are looking for, and the overall vibe that they get from being on your website.
Is it a pleasant experience overall? And can they find what they're looking for quickly
and efficiently? Before I go any further, let's explain why design is so important to
SEO. A lot of people don't know this, but Google has what are called Quality Rater Search
Guidelines. This is a document that goes each year to their human Quality Guideline Raters.
They actually employ people whose job it is to look at search results and look at the
actual quality of what's being selected [in search results]. Their job is basically to
pick what a human would pick [out of the available choices]. And then the Google engineers take
that information and try to program the algorithm, the actual ranking algorithm of Google, to
duplicate what a human would pick. This is part of what is going into their machine learning.
In a way, Google does use humans to look at the quality of pages to help the actual Google
ranking algorithm determine what things are good, and what things are not so good. The
two most important ranking signals in Google are quality of content, and the link profile.
It's pretty easy to see what words are on a page, and measure things such as how long
somebody is on a page, how many pages people visit while they are on your site, how many
people click on a given search result in a given position, and measuring that against
the average of that position. Likewise, it's also easy to measure how many links are coming
into a given website. And with Google's last few [major] updates to the core algorithm,
they have gotten much better at determining what a page is actually about. So, pages that
link to you that are similar to your page are going to be given more weight. It's hard
to quantify design, and how many people like what they are seeing. That's where the human
quality raters come in. They can help Google understand what is a well-designed site, and
what are the characteristics [of a good website]. When users are happy with your site, are they
spending more time on it? Are they scrolling farther down the page? Are they taking more
actions? Such as clicking more buttons? Those are things that they can measure. They can
measure things on the page through Google Analytics. One of the things that is very
interesting about the Quality Rater Guidelines -- they have a section where it talks about
an acronym called E-A-T. E. A. T. Which stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.
Google is looking at the expertise of your site, how authoritative your site is, and
the trustworthiness of your site. So this is where design comes into play. One of the
sections in here that I find very interesting is when these Quality Raters are looking at
a page, they are told to look at certain things. Like the main content of the page, is a satisfying
amount? Does it answer your question? But one of the things that is very interesting
that is mentioned there is they are told to look at the time, expertise, talent, and quality
that went into making this website. In other words, the design and the expertise that is
showing in the actual design of your website is a factor that they are told to look at.
And told to weigh into whether they trust this site or not. Case in point, if you're
on your mobile phone, and you're looking at a site, and it is not mobile-friendly, then
there's probably not a lot of time, expertise, talent went into making this site. If your
site looks like it was made in 1995, and every other site looks like it was made in 2018,
or at least in the last year or two, then not a lot of time, expertise, talent, or skill
went into making your site. These things really do matter. It's not just taking some SEO dust
and sprinkling it on at the end. You really do have to put some thought into the design,
and make it easy for people to find what they're looking for. But also, making it a pleasant
experience for your customers. Design does matter. The more appealing a design is, the
better experience that your customers are going to have, and the longer that they are
going to stay on your website. If they go to your site, and it looks janky, and old,
and cheap, and lame, they're probably not going to trust your site, and they're probably
going to bounce away (click back to the set of Google results) and pick something else.
Those are negative signals and those are things which can end up hurting your rankings over
time. Two other things that are in the Quality Rater Guidelines that I find very interesting.
They say, How often is the site being updated? Publishing on a regular basis is a sign of
authority and trustworthiness, meaning you care about your site. Another thing that was
in the Quality Rater Guidelines is, If the site is too distracting for you to use, and
find what you're looking for, that's a bad sign. What do I think is a good timeline for
redesigning your site? About every two to four years is about how often you should be
redesigning your website. You should be tracking what products, what information, what pages
are popular on your site, and maybe making more of those. And you should also be looking
at where people are clicking [once they are on a page]. You can use tools like CrazyEgg
to track that information. Those are important things to look at, and they can help guide
you into a better design that is more satisfying to your customers. If you're not convinced
by this yet, I would say...If you had two websites that you were trying to buy a product
from, and one looked like it was designed in 1997, and the other one looked like it
was designed in 2017, which one would you put your credit card information into? I think
the choice is very clear. Design really does make a difference. You have to upkeep your
site. It's not something that you can build once, and then completely forget about and
never touch again. It doesn't work like that, it's something that you should be thinking
about, how to improve it. SEO is a thing where it's a lot of incremental improvements over
time. It's not any one or two magic bullets that solve everything for you all the time.
It's a lot of incremental progress, and a lot of incremental improvement. In the last
couple minutes of the video, I want to go over really quickly, why I think web design
companies that are well-versed in SEO are going to have a distinct advantage over web
agencies that are strictly about the design and development and have little to no understanding
of SEO. Here's why design often gets overlooked. A lot of the time, SEO and web design and
development are looked at as two different aspects of building a website that's going
to generate leads. Or money. Or revenue. Which is what you want a website to do. Often, there
are two different sets of agencies handling this. Over here, you might have a web agency
that specializes in things like branding, design, and building the basic site, but they
might know nothing about SEO. And then over here, you might have a SEO company that understands
things like building links, keyword density, or things of that nature. And I think that
model is very broken in a lot of ways. Because whoever gets to that client first, is usually
going to get the bulk of their budget. And instead of working together as a cohesive
unit, the two agencies are really battling for who is going to get paid. Also, I think
it's important to point out, if we're talking about straight-up marketing sites, basic e-commerce
sites, or a site where you're selling a service or you're selling a product to people -- I
believe that SEO companies that have a handle on, and a background in web design and development
are going to have a distinct advantage over agencies that are just bound to design and
development, and don't understand SEO. And here's why I say that. The people out there
who are watching this -- if you're hiring agencies, if you're hiring consultants -- you're
basically hiring someone to build you a website that will generate traffic. You want a site
that looks nice, but in the end, what you really want is more business. You want more
revenue, more customers, more traffic, more money coming into your bottom line. And if
the website is not doing that, then it's not doing it's job. So where the SEO companies
have an advantage: Instead of being a design and development agency that [tries to] do
SEO [on the side], instead, become an agency that does SEO where design and development
is part of the SEO. Because in the end, that's what you're going for anyway. And being able
to have that third leg of the table -- with the content, wit the link building, and the
design and development -- it makes the whole structure better. If you're getting value
out of these videos, do me a favor, go ahead and Subscribe. If you have a SEO question
of your own that you'd like us to answer, go ahead and leave that in the comments below.
And then we'll answer that out in a video for you. My name is John Locke. My business
is Lockedown Design and SEO. We help manufacturers and industrial companies with SEO, helping
them get more search traffic through Google, and helping them get more Requests for Quotes.
Peace.