One of the topics which seem to confuse newcomers to the Internet marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) world is the aesthetics of a website. And it can’t really be faulted. Websites are renowned for their dull design and monochromatic appearance. As a first impulse, there are two questions that immediately spring to our minds. First, to come up with a design that will draw people in. And second, to get more links for my website.
A website is created to communicate to the world and to the search engines (so that they will send traffic to your site) and the aesthetics of the design can play a major role in making that communication. It is said that if you have seen it, you have made a assumption about its appearance. And the assumption is often correct. Which is to say that the appearance of a website has been taken into account in its link building strategy.
This strategy simply means that the website is somehow designed to make its way into the databases of leading search engines. The efforts of SEO agents have been focused around ‘boundary searches’ and the link success rate for searchable content. Most SEO experts believe that a link needs to meet certain criteria before it is indexed by any search engine. These are basic technical requirements of any link. The first and foremost requirement is the keyword in the link’s text. Secondly, time and again, the link should have some useful content for the website it is linking to.
First of all the subject of your website matters. But it has to be visible and it has to be keyword rich. There is no use of high page rank and moderate amount of website traffic if you site is not designed to bring in the relevant audience. Normally the visitors come to your page to find out information and product or service that your website has to offer. It is a fair comparison to say that your site information is the first impression that your prospective client have of your knowledge of the niche and providing it to the user. If he gets happy with his first impression, he will be a repeat visitor. So the prominence of information on the web page matters the most. No matter how your website looks like, without valuable content and offering useful resources, the visitor will leave the minute the click is made on your website.
Again, the design must be responsive to the device that it is being viewed from. And the theme of your site must be displayed in similar style on all the desktop and all the mobile platforms. If you are not providing the user with responsive experience, you will be losing them to the competition.
It has been said that aesthetics is not all about visual relationships within the site. There is a huge importance attached with the number of inbound links to your website. This is often called external linking (or off page) optimisation or link popularity. Most beginners recommend their clients to publish their site to some top ranking directories like DMOZ, Jayde or Yellowpages. However, it seems that there is another take-up that puts complete emphasis on links to the site. The theme of the website is the deciding factor on the quality of inbound link and it is usually based on the theme or the initial concept of the website.
For example, if there is a page where you are offering music of a particular genre, its theme must be related to the genre. So around 60% of the factors considered when a link is built up are related to page themes. Although the others are equally important. This think may seem rather mechanical, but it is about the basis of why the source of these links matters so much.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Search engine optimisation comes down to more than just links. It is a complicated and a continuous process.
