One of the least thought about SEO factors is web design, particularly the load speed of your pages and your visitors reactions. Search engines, particularly Google although the others will soon follow, are constantly looking at factors that determine a pages authority.

Authority is a word often discussed, but what does it mean? In simple terms, authority was a voting system. The more pages that linked to your page, and the more relevant (and high ranking) that link was, the more ‘votes’ you received. Search engines are now modifying this concept to take into account the vote cast by the visitor to your pages, particularly if they have arrived through one of the search result links.

How does this affect web design? If your page happens to appear at number one for a particular search term and the searcher clicks on that link, the search engines are hoping the searcher has found the right information. If they have, the searcher is happy and will continue to use their search facilities. If the searcher doesn’t find what they are looking for, particularly after a couple of attempts, they may move to another search engine – they don’t want that. Your web design can play a big part in influencing the searchers decision.

If, for example, your web page loads very slowly and the searcher hits the back button before the page has finished loading, in future the search engines will start to down rank your pages, even though every other aspect of your SEO would place that page at number one.

It is not just speed of course. Web design includes colour, the placement of images and of course advertising. Above the fold has been the most popular area to place advertising. These days, if you flood that area with advertising, you are saying “my content is not worth reading – follow these ads and earn me money instead”. I am sure that is not your intent. If it is, don’t be surprised if your prized ‘above the fold’ search engine listings end up on page two or three.

Like a bricks and mortar business, visitors will be voting with their feet (or fingertips). Your web design needs to invite the reader in, get them to stay for as long as possible, then hopefully act. The action you require will depend on the intent of your site. If you are selling, you want them to buy; if you monetize through advertising of some sort, you may want them to click through to an advertiser. What you don’t want is the ‘bounce’.

Manage your web design in such a way your page loads quickly, is inviting and has the content to satisfy the visitor. Your pages will, over time, start to outrank those that have not included web design in their SEO strategies.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 5:22 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.