At iformat, our specialty is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for tradesmen. In essence, it’s all about gaming the system (Google) to ensure your tradie website features prominently on search engine results.
There are many tools we use to achieve that goal – one of which is web design.
That’s because in addition to swaying your visitors, web design also has role to play in how Google ranks your web pages.
Is your site designed to be mobile friendly?
If you’ve been following SEO news recently, you’ll know that in the last year, Google made the shift to mobile-first indexing.
This was a big deal – if you missed it, click here to get caught up.
Essentially though, Google changed their search algorithm to rank web pages on their mobile-friendliness – even for desktop searches!
This is because the majority of searches are mobile nowadays.
You can have the best-written content and highest-resolution pictures. But if your site isn’t mobile friendly, it’ll still rank lower than one that is!
Mobile-friendly web design ensures that your site is visually-appealing and easily navigable both on mobile and desktop. In addition to ensuring a positive user experience (see part 1), Google actively rewards the sites that do it.
What makes for mobile-friendly web design?
- Shorter pages in general
- Clearly divided web pages
- Properly spacing out text and images
- Large call-to-action buttons
Google has the power to make your website and your business appear in their search results. That means making it as mobile-friendly as possible.
Good web design makes your site crawl-friendly
Every once in a while, Google sends out crawlers. These are bots (autonomous computer programs) that read through your site and evaluate its relevance to certain Google searches against competing pages. The pages it determines are most relevant will be ranked higher.
And if these crawlers can’t read your site, you can say goodbye to a high rank!
Effective web design gives these crawlers something to work with. In particular, you’ll need to ensure that:
- Images, PDFs and other files are easily discoverable
- Your site uses directory pages that place related pages together
- Pages link to each other naturally
- Your pages use prominent headings and subheadings
- Content is laid out in a logical hierarchy
- You use indexes, tables of contents and directory pages
While crawlability and indexing are not the same as visual appeal, web design still has an impact that directly impacts your site’s rankings.
Each of these tells Google exactly what it’s looking at. This allows it to better determine what your web pages are all about and rank them accordingly.
Make sure your site uses a consistent hierarchy
We alluded to this one just above. But honestly, this is so important it deserves its own section!
Your website needs a logical structure that follows a natural flow. Pages that relate to each other need to link to each other. Similar topics and services need to be collated on index and content tables.
For example, let’s say you’re a mechanic who wants to push their routine maintenance service. Each page might have its own pages telling visitors why they should choose you for these services.
But to maximise your site’s SEO performance, you’ll want to ensure each of these individual pages are featured on a directory or table of contents.
Think of it like a filing cabinet. Neat folders and subfolders tell you exactly where everything is. Google operates similarly, using this structure to read and interpret your site.
This allows it to more accurately categorise and place your pages for SEO purposes.
Balancing fancy graphic with loading times
Images. Video. Multimedia. Each of these makes your tradie website look great from both a user and SEO perspective.
However, each one also directly impacts loading speed!
Google likes websites that load quickly, and actively punishes those that take too long to load. This isn’t just our experience – Google says so itself.
As such, web design for tradies needs to carefully weigh up loading speed with visual appeal and multimedia. Good web design strikes the perfect balance between appearance and performance.
We know you want flashing graphics and hi-res pictures of successful jobs plastered all over your tradie site. However, this has the potential to tank your SEO if you go overboard.
As such, you’ll want to strike the perfect balance between visually appealing and reasonable loading times.
Web design that gets your site found on Google
At iformat, our specialty is SEO for tradesmen.
When we build websites for tradies, we don’t just build a site that looks good. Our approach to web design also designs sites with an eye towards SEO, and getting your site to rank.
If you have a tradie website that isn’t bringing in leads and sales then you’ve come in the right place. Contact us today on 1300 88 64 50 to learn how our digital marketing for tradies can help your tradie business.