How Your Web Design Affects Your Google Ranking.

Did you know that a bad web design can affect your Google rankings? It doesn't matter if you use WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix— a corrupt design can make it impossible for your company site to be discovered.

User experience also plays a role in whether your company will make a sale through your website. Slow load times, broken links, and confusing copy is enough to deter even the most impulsive spender from going through with their purchase.

Here are the top 3 things you need to keep in mind when going through your website’s design.

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Why Web Design Is Important To Google

Your website serves two purposes:

1. To help people discover your company

2. To make sales

Potential customers can discover your website organically through keywords and excellent content. We already have an entire post dedicated to SEO keywords and how you can use it to get passive leads— so we won't go into too much detail here.

Basically, a website with blogs or landing pages with competitor-friendly and highly searched key phrases can land you on Google's front page.

And make you a ton of money.

However, those SEO keywords won't do you any good if your website creates a crappy user experience. Google bots consider a wide variety of factors before it decides to put you on its front page.

While high-quality content can help your website reduce bounce rate or convert sales, your web design is what determines whether Google will bother suggesting your website at all.

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3 Ways Your Web Design Hurts (or Helps) Your Google Ranking

According to Search Engine Journal, the top seven factors to get your company website to rank on Google are:

1. High-quality content.

2. Mobile-first.

3. Page Experience.

4. Page speed

5. On-page optimization.

6. Internal links.

7. External links.

Of these seven, only three are dependent on your website design.

Below, we'll go over each of them so you can understand just how much Google is judging your web design— and whether or not that judgment hurts or helps your company's revenue.

HELPS: You're Mobile-Friendly

Around 2018, Google told web designers that they should focus on being mobile-first. This means that designers should expect users to view websites on mobile before any other viewing device (i.e., desktop, laptop, or tablet).

So, on top of making sure your website looks great and works on desktop, you have to make sure it works seamlessly on the mobile version (first). The reason, naturally, is that more people are using their phones to search the internet.

Here's how you can test your website's mobile-first adaptability:

Enter your company name in Google's search bar on your phone. Does it show up? If you can't even show up on the first page of Google for your company name, you've got bigger things to worry about (and you should probably talk to a professional).

Once you're on your company site, scroll through your homepage, blogs, and other relevant pages in your Menu Navigation via your phone to ensure everything is running smoothly.

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HURTS: Formatting

As we mentioned earlier, user experience is a huge factor in whether or not Google will recommend your website on its front page.

When your web design formatting is confusing or takes too long to load, fewer people will click on your website— much less go through the entire Customer Journey. When Google sees people constantly leaving your website after a few seconds, it will assume your site is faulty.

So even if you have great keywords, bad formatting is going to hinder any chances of those keywords actually working.

Google's Page Experience looks at a few things:

• Loading performance: Your site should load in under 2.5 seconds.

• Interactivity: All buttons, links, and sales processes should work quickly to respond to user intent. In other words, if a link on your website is broken, you need to fix it ASAP.

• Visual stability: Are your website images adjusting to mobile dimensions? Are the photos and video dimensions too large and decreasing load time? These are things you need to know.

HELPS: Responsive Web Design

RWD or Responsive Web Design is a must if you want Google to like you. This goes hand in hand with mobile-first. If your website looks the same on mobile compared to a laptop compared to a tablet— you're in good standing.

RWD is the pillar of good web design. Not only does it help with page speed and user experience, but it makes your company look professional and reliable.

Here are 3 signs your website doesn't have RWD.

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