You’ve finally got your website up and running. You’ve spent weeks working on the design, getting it just right. When it comes to attracting readers to your site, there are more factors at play than just how pretty your website is, and this is where SEO can help. Here are some tips for creating a visually appealing and easy-to-read website that also performs well in search engines:

Use alt text on your images

Alt text is a short description of an image that can be read by screen readers. Screen readers are software programs used by people with visual impairments to read webpages aloud, and alt text helps them understand what an image contains. This is especially important because many images contain content that’s not visible at first glance. For example, charts or graphs with numbers or text written in them; or illustrations of animals or plants that might be unfamiliar to screen reader users.

Alt text should be descriptive but not overly long (50 words max), specific to the image you’re describing (don’t use “image” as part of your alt text) and written in lowercase letters only (no capitals).

Optimise your URLs

According to leading SEO service provider Marketing One (Brisbane Australia) website’s URL is like its address and should be simple, clear and easy to read. It should also tell you something about the content of the page it links to. The following tips will help ensure this:

• Use hyphens rather than underscores (_) to separate words in a URL; it makes them easier for people on screen readers or other devices that cannot recognise characters like % or & (this applies even if you’re using them elsewhere on your site).
• Don’t include unnecessary words such as “the”, “a” etc., which will make your pages look less professional and clutter up search results unnecessarily when people type in specific terms into Google or another search engine. For example: https://www.yoursitehere/index_page_name would be better than https://www.yoursitehere/index__page_name_that_you_can_justly_call_.html

Make your site mobile-friendly

If you haven’t already, it’s time to make sure that your website is viewable on mobile devices. This can be done by using a responsive design or by choosing a theme that already has this feature built-in (like the ones listed above).

Don’t make your site too wide. Most people access websites from their smartphones these days, so don’t go crazy with how wide you make the page and what size images you use. A good rule of thumb would be to keep any one column about 500px wide, which is about as wide as most phone screens are nowadays anyway; anything over 600px will start looking silly when viewed on a phone screen because it’ll take up half of their screen real estate.

Write in short, concise paragraphs

• Use bullet points and sub-headings to break up your content.
• Keep paragraphs short (2-4 sentences).
• Use numbers, letters and bolding to make it easy for readers to skim through your content. This can be especially useful if you have a lot of information on one page or if you’re using a lot of images that may distract you from reading the text.
• Write in active voice instead of passive voice so that the reader understands who is doing what action in each sentence; this will also help with SEO.

Install an SSL certificate on your website

SSL certificate is what makes your website secure and trustworthy. This means that when a user goes to your website, they’ll see a padlock icon in their browser and know that their information is safe. It’s also important for search engines like Google because they use SSL certificates as one of the factors in ranking websites. As such, it’s crucial that you install an SSL certificate on your website if you want it to rank well in organic search results (i.e., those listings that show up before paid ads).

You can get an SSL certificate from major providers like Let’s Encrypt and Cloudflare; however, these companies charge anywhere between $5 a month all the way up to hundreds per month depending on how many domains you want to be covered by the same certificate. If money isn’t an issue then go ahead and invest in a good one. But if finances are tight then there are plenty of free options available–the problem here is usually quality control: some providers offer better encryption than others which means higher levels of protection against hackers trying to steal personal data from users’ computers.”

Include internal links

Internal links are important for user experience, as they help search engines understand the content on your site. They also allow users to navigate through it more easily and find relevant information quickly.

Internal links can be used in many ways:

• To link to other pages on your site. This makes it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for, which will make them happy.
• To link back to an external website that has useful information related to yours. This will increase traffic from those pages because people searching for dog food may see yours first.

Add schema markup to your web pages

Schema markup is a way to add structured data to your website. This helps search engines understand what your pages are about and can improve their ranking in search results.

Schema markup also makes it easier for people who use assistive technology (AT) devices such as screen readers or braille displays to navigate around websites; this includes those with disabilities like low vision or hearing loss, but also anyone who might be accessing the web on mobile devices where touch interactions are less precise than those on desktop computers.

There are three types of schema: structured data that uses microdata, JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data), and RDFa (Resource Description Framework). We’ll focus on microdata here because it’s relatively easy to implement; however, JSON-LD is becoming more common due to its flexibility when compared with RDFa’s strict syntax rules.

Optimise title tags and meta descriptions

The title tag is the text that appears in the browser tab and the meta description is the text that appears under the title tag. Both are important for SEO and user experience, so you should make sure they’re optimised for both.

The title tag should be descriptive and relevant to search queries, as well as contain keywords related to your content. If you’re writing an article about “how to create a visually appealing website”, then using those two phrases in your title will help people find it when they search on Google or another search engine (like Bing).

The meta description should also contain keywords related to your content, but it should also act like an advertising slogan by enticing people into clicking through from there onto your page - rather than simply being informative.

Don’t compromise functionality for design goals

Design goals are different from business goals and should not be confused with them. A design goal might be to make sure your website looks as good as possible, while a business goal would be to increase sales or add new customers through the website.

For example, You could have a design goal of making sure that all of your images are square-shaped so they look good on mobile devices, but that could affect how well people can navigate through your site if you don’t make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for (which may actually result in fewer conversions).

You can have both a pretty website and a successful one

Many websites are not as visually appealing as they could be, which can make it difficult for users to navigate around the site or even find what they’re looking for. This is especially true if you have a lot of content on your site, which is why it’s important to use the right tools when creating your website so that it’s easy for people to read and understand what you’re offering.

In a nutshell

When you’re building a website, the last thing you want to do is compromise on design. You have to balance your need for good design with the need for SEO-friendliness and accessibility, but it’s possible. The key is making sure that you don’t sacrifice one for another-instead, find ways to make them work together.

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