As computers, the internet and technology in general have all evolved leaps and bounds over the past decade, so has the desire for aesthetically pleasing websites. This trend has completely changed how we absorb information and build websites, but we sometimes put too much stock into pretty design and not enough into the need for sound structure. The nature of web design and its relationship with SEO revolve around websites and search engines being able to link to and find your pages. Small errors in how the website is designed from the ground up can create serious issues when it comes to search engine placement. If you want to make sure that your SEO potential is up to par, then continue reading to find out about four web design tricks that you need to have implemented.

Reconfigure Your URL Structure

If your pages and blog posts’ URLs look more like a random assortment of numbers and letters than they do well thought-out keywords, then you are doing it wrong. Ample SEO benefit exists by ensuring that your website’s URL structure reflects that of your pages’ titles. For instance, a variation of a correct URL structure for this page would end with something that “four-web-design-elements-to-boost-your-SEO-potential-today”, rather than “p=5553.html” or something similar. Pinging networks with these random URL strains will not provide further association of your content’s meaning to search engines, which can result in lower rankings in search engines.

Optimize Your Images

Simply throwing up some images on a page and calling it a day is not sufficient for someone who wants to focus on optimal SEO performance. Search engines may penalize you if the images in question are too big, improperly formatted or plagiarized without credit being given. To avoid this fate, always be sure to optimize your images by saving them in a format that maximizes quality and size. Then, be sure to provide descriptive file names that are relevant to the topic, instead of generic nonsense ones (just like the URLs mentioned above).

Improve Page Loading Times

Customers and visitors will only wait so long for your site to load before they hit the back button in their browser and consider you to be a lost cause. You only have a few seconds, so optimizing your page loading times is crucial in keeping that traffic. Search engines monitor bounce rates like this and shift rankings accordingly, so please be aware. In addition to this, pages with slower loading times independently are ranked lower in search; you don’t want a double-whammy against your website, so be sure to research many of the different ways you can improve page loading times.

Include a Sitemap

Pinging networks all across the web can be difficult for even the biggest drones that make up the search engine crawler network. Because of this, the number one way to ensure that all of your content is indexed properly is by including your very own sitemap in the mix. There are a myriad number of tutorials out there on how to create a sitemap from scratch – with multiple ways to do it – but the most important thing is that you have one enabled and accessible on your website. This will ensure that all pages are listed in search (if there are some you don’t want listed, then you can also make exceptions for that).