In a fight to the finish, who would win in the epic battle of Design vs SEO. This question comes up time and time again. I have had to face this question myself several times. As a passionate designer, my heart races to defend design as the most important of all assets in our website creation toolbox. As an SEO expert, my brain kicks in to say, “what good is design if nobody sees it?” This battle rages on as one’s idea of aesthetics may contradict SEO best practices, and how a website with bad design may make the most searchable of sites unpleasant to read, leading to high bounce rates. Often, a designer may provide a website for a client, only to find that after 6 months, no traffic has been generated. After an SEO expert comes to review the site, he may easily find that the site will need to be redesigned to rank. This is a nightmare that companies have had to face for far too long. In an effort to understand this battle, we will examine the strengths of the two competitors.
Design: Design has existed for a long time. Ask a creationist and he will tell you that God himself is a designer. Humans have been designing since we first picked up a stick and drew in the sand or placed an image on a cave wall. It has since then developed into a language of its own capable of speaking millions of words without saying anything at all. It is capable of drawing on emotions, and it is able to encourage the viewer to take action. Good design can add up to more than the sum of its parts, meaning that it can tell an entire story just by the relationship between images. This has innumerable applications in the business world and is used everyday by advertisers to draw people online or to the stores. Advertising without design is just radio.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization is a protocol by which a website will find a competitive advantage over its competitors by filling in all of the possible cracks of a website with useful information that may make the site easy to find. Good SEO techniques involves good research and can easily allow a small company to compete with larger, more established organizations. SEO is the method by which one can spread their message and the way in which one is found by those searching. SEO also allows for greater networking possibilities and can add legitimacy to a company by making them a resource to the market or a authority figure to searchers. It is a valuable tool that becomes more and more necessary to companies every day.
The division and competition between the two studies continues to grow as very few designers are taught the fundamentals of good SEO. The nuances of effective SEO based design strategies are therefore left behind when a designer begins a project, making it hard to optimize in the future and costing the company thousands of dollars in a re-design. We strongly suggest that when you begin a website, you ask your designer if they are familiar with SEO strategies and if they are capable of designing a website that can be optimized. If they do not, then you should probably look elsewhere. In order to get a website that will benefit your company, here are a few technicalities that your designer should know, so ask them:
1. Why are CSS layouts are more search friendly than html tables?
2. Why should my page be designed in a Z or F pattern of hierarchy?
3. Why should my website load fast and how will you accomplish this?
4. Why should my navigation should be streamlined?
5. Are you familiar with my company brand?
6. Why does each page need to have unique and original html content?
7. How easy will it be to edit my website?
Although there are other factors to consider, the way your designer answers these relatively simple questions should be a good indicator of how prepared they are at providing you a website that is both well designed an easy to optimize. After all, these should be simple questions to answer if they are even minutely experienced with SEO friendly design. Otherwise, they may provide a great looking site, that will do you no good.
This competition of titans continues to grow as people continue to debate which is better. Rather, at Saba SEO, we encourage one to view the two as a married couple. This couple may have its occasional fights, but once the disagreements are settled, the two emerge stronger than ever in a solid union. Similarly, in any successful website, you cannot have one without the other. This is why our web design team is versed in both design and SEO, this way, design can continue with SEO efforts in mind, avoiding future conflict of interest between the two. It also allows us to provide a service at a lower price as we begin with SEO research before we even start designing a site, making the entire process quick, affordable, and easy to edit.
If you are ready to go with a professional San Diego Web Design Company, contact Saba SEO today at 1-866-937-1717. We optimize new and existing websites for top results on all major search engines.
For more tips please cut and paste the following urls to your browser address bar:
The 5 hats of Website Development
http://sabaseo.com/blog/the-5-hats-of-website-development/
Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
http://sabaseo.com/blog/search-engine-optimization-with-saba/
