In today’s digital marketplace, it’s common to stumble upon web designers who showcase search engine optimisation as a core part of their services. Hiring one provider to handle both web design and SEO carries many advantages; however, the issue of concern is that too many companies that offer both SEO and website design fail to understand the complexities of optimisation fully. The best practices of optimising a website are continuously changing, and the competitive nature of search is growing fiercer by the day.

Suppose you’re looking for a website designer to handle your site’s development and optimisation. In that case, it is critical that you choose wisely and enlighten yourself on what constitutes a search engine friendly website. Below we offer a number of characteristics that contribute to search-friendly web designs and how to go about finding the right designer for your site.

SEO Friendly HTML Coding Structure

The process of developing a well-optimised site must address the HTML coding structure. Otherwise referred to as a page’s back-end, the code used on each page and the techniques in which the code is applied can hugely influence how search engine friendly a website is.
SEO friendly website providers will often code sites using CSS (or Cascading Style Sheets) when building an optimised site. This helps to ensure that the HTML code of each page is minimised for efficient crawling and indexing by search engine spiders. By applying CSS in the HTML, web designers can avoid using code that can take up a lot of space, such as tags for various fonts, colours, and other styling elements. This will oftentimes promote a more excellent ratio of keyword-optimised content over cumbersome HTML code.

Similarly, the keyword-optimised content (or page copy) should be presented as early as possible in the coding structure of a page. In many cases, the code of site-wide navigation links and other non-optimised elements are pieces of code that search engines spiders interpret first when crawling a page. If the page text is buried at the bottom of the page’s back-end, the spider will reach the content last after chewing on many links and non-optimised content. The most skilled search engine friendly web designers will address this concern by making use of ‘div’ tags in the HTML. Using ‘div’ tags can ensure that rich, keyword-optimised copy is presented early in each page’s back-end.

Niche SEO Skills and Expertise

Unlike some website design and development services that may be one-and-done projects, search engine optimisation is an ongoing process. Professional SEO companies will track, monitor, and report performance statistics and make continuous adjustments to ensure the optimal outcome.
In essence, SEO’s have niche skills and expertise that may go overlooked by a typical web designer. Such specialities will often include the analysis and reporting of Google Analytics data keyword position statistics and providing detailed reports and strategy recommendations. Most SEO companies will also staff professional copywriters to generate content that’s both reader-focused, and keyword optimised and have a strong portfolio of link building.

SEO copywriting (for on-page optimisation) and link building (for off-page optimisation) are two primary services of strong SEO providers. Ensuring that your prospective SEO-friendly web designer can provide this expertise is reliable for qualifying candidates. Often, asking your prospects related questions or examples of their SEO work can shed light on just how effective they are.

Search Engine Friendly Content Management Systems

Content management system (CMS) software is a convenient and highly sought-after solution for building and operating a website. Now, most website designers develop sites based on CMS software. As a result, you must ensure the CMS software caters to essential SEO capabilities if you opt for a CMS-based site.
Your CMS must have the necessary page editing functionality for SEO. You or your web designer must be able to write keyword optimised page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. In addition to functionality features, each page’s back-end HTML coding structure will often depend on the type of CMS software used to build the site. Several content management systems produce pages with minimal, search engine friendly coding structures.

Some of the characteristics that define SEO friendly content management systems include:
– software that generates pages based on CSS, as opposed to nestled tables and other cumbersome coding structures
– a CMS platform that is considered ‘developer friendly’ in that it offers the capabilities of implementing links, copy, images, videos, and other elements in specific areas throughout a page
– software that allows users to produce dynamic, keyword-friendly URLs
platforms that automatically generate XML sitemaps for submission to Google Webmaster Tools.

Be a Smart Shopper and Know What to Ask

If you’re seeking a website design company for both the creation and optimisation of your website, be sure to ask your prospective providers many questions. You’ll want to address designers’ technical capabilities, like their HTML coding practices and graphic design skills. If CMS software is the basis for your website, inquire about the type of platform being used.

Many web designers out there claim to be SEO experts yet fail to execute the intricacies of optimisation effectively. As a shopper, being aware of the ideal aspects of search engine friendly web design can help you pinpoint the right expert for these services.