So you have your website. Your content is great, it helps your audience. Yet, the number of your website visitors isn’t growing. If you find yourself in this situation, perhaps you should consider link building. And, more importantly, you should check if your website’s design is at the top of its game.
What is Link Building?
Inbound links or backlinks are HTML hyperlinks that redirect to a website from another. It’s very useful to have multiple external links pointing back to your website. You can think of it like having people recommending your content to the search engines.
Why are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks pointing back to your content provide a “signal” to search engines that your page is important. A nice way of achieving this is writing quality guest posts for other websites. Not only you can put your name out there, but you can also provide useful content for a different audience.
Why is Web Design Important for Link Building?
Even if you have the greatest content there is, with a badly designed website, nobody is going to read it. There are many ways in which a well-designed website can help you, but here are a few:
- Make a Better First Impression
A professionally designed website will help your new visitors have a great first impression of your business. A clean, intuitive layout will give off credibility and experience. Even if it sounds superficial, it doesn’t matter how good your content is if you can’t convince people to read it. And a great way to do that is by making your website pleasing to the eye.
The way your website is designed dictates the way your customer will see your brand. Having an outdated and unpleasant design will harm your business. Your audience will leave your page and move to the next without a second thought.
- Improve Search Rankings
There are a lot of design elements that influence the way content is published on your website. This, in turn, affects how your site is indexed by search engines. Apart from the layout of your content, web design can directly influence SEO.
For instance, if your website’s loading speed is low, there’s a chance that your rankings are the same. So you should take time to drop unnecessary plugging and optimize your images. Using low-quality images will ruin all your efforts of having a well-designed website. So it’s important to have your pictures professionally taken and edited. There is a lot of software that can help you achieve this.
- Establish Your Brand Identity
Having a consistent brand identity will help you build credibility and reliability for your business. A professional website will get your story to your customers more effectively.
For this, you should use consistent fonts, styles, and layouts across all of your pages. Inconsistencies can make you look unprofessional. Also, it can make your audience confused as to what style or colors they should associate with your brand.
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Important Factors for a Well-Designed Website
Great website designs are built based on many factors. They range from a great layout to having a focal point. There are many important elements to take into consideration. Here are a few key points that you should keep in mind when building your website:
- Simplicity
Sometimes, less is more. This is also true for web designs. If your page is cramped and disorganized, people won’t be able to find their way around. If a customer doesn’t find what they look for quickly, they will lose interest and search somewhere else.
A clean design is the best choice if you consider user experience. For instance, try to find a color palette that suits the brand you’re building. However, try to use less than five colors in your design.
- F-shaped Pattern
There are studies about this. Most people read in an F shaped pattern. By tracking eye movements, we can see that content in the top and left area of the screen gets the most attention.
So having an F-shaped content layout imitates people’s natural reading patterns (at least in the West). Effective web design works in the way people function naturally. This makes it intuitive and easy to find information.
- Mobile Friendly
Since everyone has a smartphone nowadays, most of our online time is spent on our phones. This makes it very likely that if someone is on your website, they’ll be on their smartphone. Not having a mobile-optimized design will make your visitors just skip to the next website.
A great way to have a mobile-friendly website is to learn how to use Bootstrap. This is a toolkit that can provide you with great components for building a responsive website. You can find more information about Bootstrap in 14 Days of Bootstrap 4 Introduction.
- Great Content
A well-designed website is nothing without great content. All these design elements are meant only to showcase your content and stir people’s interest. People shouldn’t spend time on your website, only to find out that your content doesn’t help them. Your relationship with your audience is going to suffer.
So try to make content that answers the questions of your public. Search for relevant keywords and popular topics related to your business. Create content with your reader in mind.
What to Take Away
When designing your website, you should keep in mind that your site is like your business card. If you want external links to your pages, build on your credibility. The first step in showing professionalism is having a great design.
Link building is a great way of increasing your reach. No matter how great your content is, you still need to attract people to read it. So give a lot of thought into the design of your website and you’re already one step closer to success!
Featured photo credits.
