Well-designed websites that are filled with quality content tend to generate better consumer traffic and are more successful at converting their visitors. So, if your blog looks outdated and generic compared to your competition, you could be losing a lot of business. Likewise, subpar content is not going to take you very far in all-important search engine results pages (SERPs). The key takeaway is clear: you have to present more than a hodgepodge of letters, numbers, images, and graphics. All these elements must fall together and paint a picture of a professional-looking, credible, and trustworthy blog.
Success By Design
Web design is the best shot you have to set yourself apart. It gives you a chance to avoid being snowed under a swarm of other blogs. You can become a recognizable brand, a go-to source of information and great content. Notice right away that blog design echoes your brand position and promise. Beyond the pretty façade, you also need a lot of substance— good blog content. But, let us start with design. On a surface level, it shapes the appearance of the website. Thus, it is a surefire way to capture attention and make a nice first impression.
Furthermore, navigation is one of the mainstays of good web design. It revolves around the utility of the navigation bar and a set of labels that lead to various pages of the blog. Everything should be easy to find with a minimum number of clicks, without any guesswork. From the performance standpoint, you can work miracles for your blog with easy navigation around the site. Visuals such as fancy typefaces may be appealing, but they must not stand in the way to smooth travel and blog’s functionality. You want to make everything as simple and intuitive as possible.
An Open Book
It is also vital to embed brand imagery and messages into web design. After all, it is the essence of your online visual identity, a way to communicate your ideas, values, and mission. So, learn the basics of visual communication. Know that people read web pages much in the same way as a book— from top to bottom, left to right. The most important bits of information should be on the upper left-hand column. That way, you allow visitors to easily notice and digest them.
Another benefit of sound placement of information is that you improve your SEO. To reap even more benefits, you can add important keywords into the HTML-based text. This enables Google bots to crawl your pages faster, which enhances your overall position and visibility. It is also a good idea to keep an eye on some other design trends that maximize your prospects for moving up in ranking. Check out the websites killing it with responsive design, parallax scrolling, multimedia, and hero images.
Content is King
For better or worse, web design on its own cannot make a real difference when it comes to boosting quality and quantity of organic traffic. It must work in synergy with other blog staples, most notably quality content. Namely, relevant and interesting posts need a complementary visual environment and the other way around. This is to say that content must be perceived as an integral part of the design and digital marketing strategy.
So, what constitutes quality content? Well, you do not have to bust your head much. You just need to religiously follow Google’s guidelines. Adhere to good SEO practices and tailor the content to ensure effective crawling and indexing of your pages. Note that content can improve your organic reach, just be sure of all the important factors from quality to word count you use, keep any handy word count tool for that. It generates social signals that help Google assess your blog relevance and authority. So, curate and promote content on social media.
Maximum Reach and Visibility
And if you really mean business, perform thorough social media monitoring to identify what type of content performs best in terms of attracting clicks, shares, likes, retweets, etc. In addition, make sure to open a dialogue with your readers and have long discussions with them. Soak in their feedback to fine-tune your social media accounts and content marketing strategies. Bear in mind that visual content along the lines of striking images, videos, and infographics do much better than plain text. They spur way more social signals across major networks.
There are also some content-creation principles that reflect rules of web design: it is best to keep things simple and on-point, without too much going on. This functionality-first approach allows you to have fast load speed, which is crucial. If people have to wait more than a few seconds for what they want, they will bounce instead of convert. Along similar lines, the text should blend seamlessly with blog design and tell a coherent story together with it. Finally, feel free to leave a lot of negative (empty) space. It lets the readers’ eyes rest and keeps fatigue and strain at bay.
To The Forefront of The Internet
Web design helps you grab readers’ attention, while content lets you retain it for a long time. These two aspects, in combination, elevate your whole internet presence. Therefore, make an effort to forge a great user experience. See if there is a need to streamline content and web design concepts. The blog should be clear, easy to use and visually appealing. Explore ways of creating intuitive navigation and establishing trust via content. Following these steps, you should be able to anchor your online persona, spark attention, get your messages across, and tap into a steady stream of traffic.
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