SEO professionals and graphic designers don’t always see eye to eye – and that’s a shame.
Modern graphic designers often prefer a clean design with lots of white space, while SEO professionals care less about the latter.
Generally speaking, SEO professionals want content wherever we can get it.
After all, if a keyword or keyword phrase does not appear on a page, the page will not appear high in search engine results.
Anyone who has worked on a website project knows that disagreements between SEO professionals and graphic designers will not be resolved by designer-specific design methodologies or SEO experts pointing to unconfirmed statistics.
I’m not a graphic designer, but having worked closely with designers for over 20 years, I know a few tricks to help SEO experts and designers get what they want.
Below are some of the best tricks I’ve learned throughout my career.
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Everything Doesn’t Have To Be Above The Fold
When it comes to content, I’ve found that both SEO professionals and designers tend to agree: The most important text and copy must be at the top of the page.
The page tells what the page is about – and it’s up to the website author to spot the essence of the page and convey that to the intended audience.
And when it comes to websites, both SEO professionals and designers need to keep the target audience in mind.
SEO experts must remember that the target audience is not a Googlebot. Conversely, designers must keep in mind that the target audience is not the art professor, nor the person who approves the final design—well, up to a point.
Typically, a designer’s work must be reviewed and approved by someone overseeing the site.
If an SEO professional wants to place content somewhere that looks out of the ordinary, this could delay the approval of the overall design – and therefore the designers could reject the request.
I’ve found that good designers who are willing to compromise can usually incorporate changes into a design that works for the client, the designer, and the SEO professional.
After all, the look and feel of a site is extremely important to its success.
But if you’re spending time and money building a beautiful site, you want to make sure people are visiting it.
So designers and SEO experts should work closely together to strike the right balance.
SEO professionals can advise on the proper structure to drive visitors to your site, and designers can make sure you’re not sending traffic to a site that doesn’t mesh well with your target audience.
All the traffic in the world won’t make a difference if those visitors don’t take the desired action.
Break Up Copy
Although designers and site visitors alike might find huge blocks of text ugly and intimidating, SEO experts often love them.
We want pixels and pixels of text for search engine spiders to feed on to their heart’s content.
In my opinion, SEO experts usually get it wrong when it comes to copy pagination.
As SEO experts, it’s our job to ensure that the content written for each page demonstrates expertise, authority and trust (E-A-T).
Although the way words are placed on a page contributes somewhat to the E-A-T of a page, pagination is not the determining factor of E-A-T.
Actually, if we’re being honest, E-A-T is more of a concept than a hard and fast rule.
Most SEO professionals know what E-A-T is when they see it, but defining it can be a daunting task.
But once the research is done and the copy is written, it’s time to trust the designer to do their job.
SEO pros may insist that the copy be present, but dictating the placement of the text is akin to telling the pilot how to fly the plane just because you’re a platinum passenger.
As long as it’s set up in a way that makes sense, our job is done.
Here are some tips I’ve found for breaking copy without interfering with traditional design duties:
Compromise On Fonts And Images
Some SEO experts sometimes act like Maverick in “Top Gun”: We feel the need for speed.
Designers don’t always share or fully understand our obsession with website loading speed.
But, they can save themselves tons of time, headaches, and hassle by using web-native fonts.
Designers should work to optimize images so that they load quickly – and if they can’t get them fast enough, they may need to be loaded via a content delivery network (CDN).
Designers should use animation sparingly, as it is usually unreadable by search engines and distracts end users. The same can be said for exaggerated videos.
But, SEO professionals must remember that a score of 100 on the Google Page Speed Tool is not necessary (anything above 90 is just an ego boost).
In Conclusion
SEO professionals and site designers must work together to create websites that will delight their audience.
Any organization that doesn’t have an SEO expert and a graphic designer on their marketing team is most likely missing out on opportunities.
But, if they work together, the natural friction between SEO professionals and designers can create some pretty brilliant diamonds.
Featured Image: Rawpixel.com /Shutterstock
