- SEO isn't just about getting back links
and working under technical SEO.
For a long time, Google has been adjusting its algorithm
to look at user experience to determine rankings as well.
So guess what?
Design is one of the key aspects of user experience.
So if you're not doing a good job with your designs,
your ranking will suffer.
Hello, everyone, I'm Neil Patel, and today
I'm going to teach you four design tweaks
that can boost your SEO traffic.
(soft music)
Before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to this channel.
And if you're on YouTube, click the alert notification.
First off, design your website
with the mobile first approach.
Back when people use desktop devices
more than mobile devices to do searches.
You can get away with your website
just being desktop friendly.
But that's changed since July 2019.
Google has enabled by default,
what they call mobile first indexing that means
when Google indexes a website,
it looks at the mobile version first in order to
determine how relevant a page is to the user search query.
The majority of people are using mobile devices to search.
According to http://www.statista.com,
64% of Google searches are done on mobile devices.
If your websites mobile experience is bad,
your rankings and traffic are definitely going to suffer.
So step one, make sure you have a decent mobile version
that delivers good experience.
That means tech that's easy to read, good font sizes,
good spacing between lines, readable colors,
clear text hierarchy, that means sub headings
and subheadings beneath that.
You want to add rich media, animated GIFs,
videos, infographics, you also want to put a lot of ads
or relevant images above the fold.
Start delivering what people want.
If you deliver what people want above the fold,
that's going to mean that they're going to be happier
with the experience which means that your rankings
over time should climb.
You also want to make sure that your design is responsive.
But think of your mobile version as a priority,
not the desktop version.
You want to test different devices, mobile devices,
and you can use tools like BrowserStack to do that
to ensure that your website is compatible
with all these different devices.
Step two, make sure your mobile version
loads as fast as possible.
You want to use CDNs, CDNs is a Content Delivery Network.
It compresses your images, your HTML, so that way,
your site loads faster and gets distributed
throughout servers all over the world,
instead of just your own site.
And you can use solutions like Cloudflare.
Step three, use Google's mobile friendly testing tool.
It'll help you meet Google's design standards.
You should use the fetch and render feature
in Google Search Console as well.
This will help you test both mobile
and desktop versions to see how Google sees your page.
Now, the next thing you want to do is organize your content
in a meaningful way.
So when you look at design,
it's not just about being mobile friendly.
If your content isn't organized in a meaningful way
then people are going to go and be like,
"Hey, your designs pretty,
"but I'm not really getting any value."
So how do you do this?
Well step one, simplify your navigation.
Don't go overboard with your navigation
by adding all these categories to your website
and useless links that people don't need to go to.
Make sure you give the most important categories
on your website, prominence.
That way, people just click on the main areas
they need to go to and all the unimportant pages
don't put them in your main navigation.
Step two, content hierarchy,
use only one H1 tag, and then subdivide the other text
blocks on your page into other forms of sub headings
H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 you get the point.
Subheadings makes it easier for people to skim your content
and read it and figure out
what the section of content is about
without reading all of it.
because when people on their mobile devices,
they may not have time to read 5000 words of text.
Think about your content has having multiple chapters
and sub topics.
That should give you an idea of what kind of subheadings
you should use, right.
The title of the book is like H1.
Each chapter is a H2, each topic within the chapter
is like an H3 heading.
Step three, for long form content and navigational links
at the top.
My buddy Brian Dean likes to do this a lot
for his longer pieces of content.
He had quick links at the top of his articles,
and you can click through and skim to
whatever section of the article that you want to get to.
The next thing I want you to do is put user intent
at the center of your user experience.
Sometimes there's no point offering a 4000 word article
when users are searching for a product to buy.
It just doesn't make sense.
You have to figure out what people are looking for
in order to determine the best type of page
that you want to create.
It's not all about creating a long form content page
or really thin piece of content.
Sometimes people may prefer a video.
Let's say I'm creating article or web page on
how to tie a tie.
Would you like to see a text description with images?
Or would you rather see a video that breaks in
how to do it in less than a minute?
You'll take the video.
The first step is to define the type of keywords
you're targeting.
Is it transactional, navigational, informational
each keyword will give you a different type of page.
For example, if it's a transactional keyword
like buy an iPhone XR, or buy an iPhone 12, or 13,
or whatever numbers that are on.
You can't just put a long form article.
People just want to go to a page that breaks down
what they're getting, the features and click a buy button.
That's really it.
Step two look at who's ranking for that keyword,
and what they're doing to rank well.
So Google's already pretty good at determining user intent.
So if you just do a search for any keyword
that you're looking to rank for,
you'll see the pages that are in the top 10.
And you're seeing what they're already doing.
If you're struggling to figure out hey,
how many social shares do they have,
how many back links what they're doing?
You can put in any keyword into Uber Suggest
and it'll give you not only other suggested keywords,
based on you know, transactional, navigational
or all types of keywords.
They'll give you question related keywords,
comparison keywords, but they'll also show you
on the right side who's ranking, how many back links,
their domain score, their social shares.
This will give you idea of what you need to do
in order to rank as well.
And when you doing that search,
you need to think and ask yourself is that a product page?
Is that a comparison article?
If it's a comparison review about a product,
is it a long form article detailing how to use a product?
Because all these things will help you understand
what you need to do in order to rank at the top.
And last but not least avoid visual interferences
on mobile devices.
Google doesn't like it when you put what they call
unsolicited interstitial on mobile pages.
If someone lands on a mobile page, and right away,
they just see a pop up.
Google hates that but on the flip side,
if someone's about to leave your site
and you show them a pop up, that's fine as long as
it's related to the article
and it provides a better user experience.
I know a lot of people hate pop ups,
but just think of it this way,
pop up gives value to the user, you should show it.
If it doesn't, and it's just fulfilling your own prophecy
of making more money then don't show it.
It has to be a win win situation.
If you need help with your website
and ranking higher on Google,
check out my ad agency Neil Patel digital.
If you enjoyed this video, like it, share it,
tell the people about it.
Thank you for watching.