Web Design and SEO: The Eternal Debate

Web
design focuses on appearance and aesthetics. SEO focuses on text
quality and
quantity. Web designers don't really like to clutter their designs with
text.
They prefer to see the images stand out on their own. SEOs on the other
hand
don't like images that much. Sure, an image can be optimized for the
search
engines by adding relevant alt attributes and titles, but this is not
enough
for a site to be properly optimized. Page copy still plays the most
important
role in website optimization for SEO.

As
a business owner you are caught in the middle of this conflict. For
your
website to convert you need both design and optimization. There is no
middle
way. You cannot have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and
still be
competitive. You cannot have just one of the two either. Without
optimization your
site is invisible to the search engines, hence to your potential
customers. On
the other hand, without a good design your site, although not
invisible, will
get nothing but hits. Web users are picky and if they find nothing of
interest
on your site they will just surf to the next site.

Having
a beautiful website no one can find is like having a store and keeping
the
doors locked. You know it is there, you've done a great job decorating
it, the
products are waiting for the customers, yet no one comes in.

When
you pay for web design don't automatically assume that by paying
thousands of
dollars on a layout you'll be a hit on the Web. The Web is a highly
competitive
place. There are already thousands entrepreneurs who, just like you,
invest in
design and hope to become the new "it." Without online marketing (SEO
being an important part of the discipline) all these entrepreneurs will
remain
in the shadow, with their beautiful websites closed to the world.

SEO
is the key to that virtual door you need to open for your customers. It
is
important that you consider this tool when you first conceive your
site. Web
design and SEO don't need to be enemies. There are enough professional
agencies
that employ both web designers and SEOs who work together to develop a
good
business website, a site that is SEO ready, accessible and readable
with any
browser. You just need to take your time, research and send a few
inquiries.
Then choose the company that answers your questions in a timely manner,
basically choose the company that proves a clear ability of designing
with W3C
standards and a clear understanding of the online trends and realities.

Then
balancing content with visual appearance shouldn't be such a difficult
task.
Aside graphics and artwork you have to choose proper font types, in a
readable
size, with colors that harmonize with the layout of the site and so on.
If your
site is not SEO ready from the first stage of the project you'll face
additional costs after you launch. SEO ready means a site that is
properly coded
(errors in the HTML code might stop some search bots from crawling and
indexing
your site correctly), with good navigability and good internal linking
structure.

On
the other hand, SEO and appearance are not the only traits of a good
site.
Brand conscious companies should look at the broader picture: instead
of
debating what is better online entrepreneurs should ask themselves what
works
best to convert visitors into clients.

Studies
show that an over optimized page might hurt the user-experience of
people with
disabilities. For example, many SEOs stuff the image alt attributes and
their
alternative titles with keywords. Blind and other visually impaired
people who
use screen readers to access the Web and read the pages cannot see the
images
and, instead of listening to a relevant image description, they'll
hear...
nonsense.

Usability
and accessibility are equally important as design and optimization.
Strangely
enough images are better for usability. They give focus to the design
and when
properly optimized they provide for less cluttered website content. The
problems appear when the images slow down the loading times, but with
the use
of CSS loading times should not be a big concern.

As
search engines prefer fast loading sites it is easy top understand why
good
coding and optimization are so important. Poor coding raises many other
problems aside loading times and might increase costs when you need
website
updates, especially when your website administrator is not the one who
created
your site.