So, you want people to Google your industry’s top keywords and see your site first. However, how does that affect how well your site works and converts once your visitor gets there?
Our belief is that the most accessible and easy-to-use sites with great web identities make for the sites with the best Search Engine Optimization.
SaaS companies often operate in a competitive market, and a well-designed website is critical to standing out and attracting potential customers. A poorly designed website can have a significant impact on a business’s online visibility, engagement, and ultimately, revenue. Let’s dive into a few best practices for SEO web design:
Create Content That Matters To The Right People
Quality content is critical to the success of any SaaS business. By creating content that really matters to the target audience, i.e. those potential customers most likely to use and benefit from your product. By doing this, you can ensure that the right people are engaging with your services and that they receive something of value in return for their time. Not only will this help increase customer acquisition and satisfaction but it also help build a loyal community around your product. The overarching goal of these initiatives is to grow brand awareness among a broader audience.
Quality content also helps establish thought leadership within the industry and increases search engine rankings which helps drive more organic traffic toward your website and services. The key is to create niche content to reach the primary target consumer that would benefit the most from the information/knowledge you provide.
Your content should be designed in a way that makes sense to the search engines and is easy for your visitors to get the information they need quickly. When it comes to the content of a website, users tend to skim and scan pages, with the majority of attention focused on headlines and bullet points, according to research by Nielsen Norman Group. Additionally, a report by Adobe found that 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content is unattractive in its layout or imagery. Therefore, businesses should invest in relevant and easy-to-read content that is complemented by appealing visuals.
Your visitors should get the urge to interact with your content and dive deeper into what you offer. You don’t want the wrong traffic visiting your website and bouncing immediately because it wasn’t what they were looking for.
Have a Design That’s Very Usable For Everyone Who Visits
Designing for usability helps to ensure that everyone on the web is able to find and use your website easily. Great design is essential for achieving a high amount of website traffic. It should be attractive and engaging, but above all, it should make all important information easily accessible and quickly understandable. If a website’s design relies heavily on visuals, stakeholders should always consider how users will interact with those visuals in order to make sure they don’t distract from the overall usability of the page.
Research shows that first impressions are essential when it comes to website design. According to a study by HubSpot, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive. This means that businesses need to invest in a visually appealing design that effectively communicates their message and brand identity.
Easy navigation is also crucial to website engagement. According to a survey by Clutch, 94% of people say that easy navigation is the most important website feature. A website that is difficult to navigate will not only drive users away but can also negatively impact a business’s conversion rates.
Good SEO practices make sure that everyone can access your content easily–the code is clean, compatible, and light, and the pages are named in ways that make sense to the search engines and your visitors. This helps you perform well with Google SEO rankings and your target audience. Improving your website interface will naturally decrease your bounce rate and advertise well to your potential customers.
A Web Presence That’s Growing and Constantly Updated
Having an active presence on the web is critical to success in today’s business around the globe. Constantly updating, refreshing, and creating content will position you as a leader in your sector and increase brand visibility. This means staying on top of industry trends, research, and newly published surveys or reports that provide insight into your company or target audience’s interests. It also requires maintaining existing content and actively engaging with users across all social media channels. A growing online presence is essential for gaining market share and building relationships with customers – both existing and potential. You can do this by staying active on your company’s blog, sharing industry updates, engaging with your audience, and so much more.
Keeping your information updated and distributing content using social media outlets for growing your business’s visibility on the web is so important to your site’s find-ability. When you pay attention to your links and info out there, it’s easy for the right people to find you, whether they’re using Google or just checking their Facebook accounts. Organic search is vital for your website, but you shouldn’t let social media go to waste either. The right mix of techniques will boost your search engine rankings.
Ensure a Mobile-Friendly Design
Mobile-friendly design is crucial to the success of any website today. Having a site optimized for mobile and tablet devices helps ensure that mobile visitors have a good experience when viewing your content. It also means people can find, access, and share the information they are looking for without the need to scroll or zoom in order to see all the content. Responsive design ensures usability, quick loading, readable text without zooming, proper spacing of links, and optimizes your pages for multiple device sizes. You can do all of these best practices while taking advantage of SEO opportunities that help improve rankings, conversions, and click-throughs.
If you forget about your mobile design, you can potentially lose a large chunk of your audience that tries to view your site via a device instead of a computer. You want to make sure you’re covering all of your bases and ensure that your website loads correctly and is easy to use across all possible platforms.
Refrain From Technical Lingo
It can be tempting to make sure that users understand all of the technical terminology associated with SaaS software. However, when promoting your SaaS product, it’s important to make sure the language used is simple and easy to understand. The goal is to make your product look as easy to use as possible. Limiting the amount of technical language you’re using makes the information easier for customers to comprehend and encourages engagement with the topic. Ditching the technical lingo also goes a long way in building trust with your customers.
The language your brand utilizes should reflect the audience you’re trying to reach. If it’s too complicated and doesn’t seem user-friendly, chances are people will not want to risk paying for your software if it seems too complex to implement. SaaS products should always be marketed to make business operations easier, not harder.
Have a Strong Website Loading Speed
Website performance is an extremely important aspect of any successful website. When a visitor arrives on your website, they expect it to load quickly and effectively present content. A slow-loading website can cause visitors to abandon the page before they’ve had a chance to properly look around, essentially wasting their time and harming your conversion rate.
In addition to the visual aspect of website design, performance is equally important. Google found that 53% of mobile site visitors will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Slow page load times can negatively affect user experience and ultimately harm a company’s online visibility. A website that takes too long to load or has difficulty navigating will deter users and lead to higher bounce rates.
By optimizing a website’s loading speed, you can ensure that the maximum number of visitors are able to see what your site has to offer so that you don’t miss out on potential customers or sales. You can optimize your website loading speed easily by compressing images, limiting the number of redirects, reducing the number of plugins, and much more. If your current website is struggling with load speed, figure out the potential weaknesses and start there.
Establish SaaS Thought Leadership
Establishing thought leadership for your SaaS business allows you to access and expand your audience. Thought leaders offer valuable, unique insights that can help educate existing customers and prospects about the product or issues related to your niche. They also help build relationships with others in their industry.
Through thought leadership, you can differentiate yourself from competitors by driving conversations around topics that matter most to the marketplace. This is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how knowledgeable you are about those areas. Putting effort into thought leadership helps establish a credible reputation as an expert in the field, which in turn, earns trust from leads, media, influencers, partners, and investors. Share your unique take on trends happening in your industry, and get a conversation started. That’s the best way to make new connections and grow your brand.
Incorporate Backlinks & Internal Links
A key part of boosting your website’s SEO is to make sure you have a healthy amount of backlinks and internal links. Backlinks are acquired by making connections with relevant resources in your industry that reference your content on their own. This builds your credibility and expands your reach.
Internal links are a little easier to include since these are just links to other pieces of content that you own. This could be pillar pages or other articles that are related to the topic you’re writing about. This provides Google with a structure to follow for your website and makes you more search engine friendly.
Your links are a significant ranking factor for Google, so you want to make sure you’re getting high-quality backlinks. Backlinking can work with you or against you depending on your link-building strategy. Think of your potential customers and where they get their resources. Reach out to those sources and see if there’s a way to be included in their content. You can even offer something to them in return to make the ask more appealing to them.
Types of Content That Can Boost Your SEO
Content is one of the key aspects of SEO and many types of content can boost organic traffic to a website. This includes blog posts, case studies, research, whitepapers, press releases, etc. Each type of content should be tailored to fulfill specific SEO objectives.
For instance, blog posts should target high-traffic keywords. At the same time, case studies and whitepapers should feature more detailed information that can be used to increase the visibility of your website in search engines. Keep in mind, you don’t want to make content for content’s sake. Be purposeful with what you’re putting out there and make sure it’s content that would be beneficial for your customer base.
Guest blogging can also be beneficial for your business to not only boost your SEO but to make valuable connections with others in your industry. From an SEO perspective, being a guest on another’s blog can increase your reach and introduce your business to a new audience that may not have heard of your company before. This is a natural way to advertise your business without being too pushy or “salesy”.
Content marketing is a powerful way to drive traffic and increase your online reach, so be sure to make use of various types of content in order to achieve optimal SEO results. Your marketing strategy should incorporate various forms of content that will drive engagement and increase your conversion rate.
SEO Goes Hand-In-Hand With Web Design
SEO is a key element for B2B SaaS companies to drive engagement and boost sales. Here’s a checklist for creating a website design that performs well for SEO:
- Conduct keyword research: Before designing your website, research the keywords that are relevant to your business and incorporate them into your website content. This will help search engines understand the relevance of your website to user searches.
- Use responsive design: Mobile responsiveness is essential for SEO, as search engines prioritize websites that offer a positive user experience on mobile devices. Ensure your website is optimized for all screen sizes.
- Use clean and valid HTML: A website’s HTML code can impact its SEO performance. Clean and valid HTML code can make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website.
- Use descriptive and keyword-rich URLs: Your website’s URLs should be descriptive and include relevant keywords to help search engines understand the content of the page.
- Optimize images: Images can enhance a website’s user experience, but they can also slow down page load times. Optimize images by compressing them and including relevant alt text.
- Use internal linking: Internal linking can help search engines understand the structure of your website and how pages are related to each other. Link relevant pages together within your website.
- Use clear and concise headings: Headings should be clear and descriptive, and include relevant keywords. This helps search engines understand the content of your website.
- Use meta descriptions: Meta descriptions provide a brief summary of a webpage’s content and can appear in search engine results. Include relevant keywords in your meta descriptions to help improve your website’s SEO performance.
- Keep page load times fast: Website speed is a key factor in SEO. Reduce page load times by optimizing images, using a content delivery network, and minimizing HTTP requests.
- Ensure your website is secure: A secure website is important for user trust and SEO performance. Use HTTPS to encrypt your website and protect user data.
In summary, creating a website design that performs well for SEO requires careful consideration of multiple factors, including mobile responsiveness, clean HTML, descriptive URLs, optimized images, internal linking, clear headings, meta descriptions, fast page load times, and website security. By incorporating these tips into your website design, you can potentially improve your website’s SEO performance and online visibility.