Web design best practices change about as often as the devices on which websites are viewed. What was cutting edge yesterday is old news today. Let’s take a look at some recent web design trends and their impact on SEO.
Responsive design
One of the most popular brands in the world, Starbucks has a responsive website.
Below is how its Full version looks like
… and its Responsive Version
The usability camp says you’ve got to use responsive design. An argument is that usable sites rank better. The SEO camp says let’s see how responsive design impacts SEO.
SEO professionals should take a look at their overall SEO strategy, and see how responsive design fits in. Better yet, they should develop a separate mobile SEO strategy that works in conjunction with their overall strategy.
Many companies run into problems when they try to retrofit their existing desktop-friendly websites for responsive design, instead of opting for a full site redesign. In either case, if you do go with responsive design, you’ve got to make sure the site is optimized for mobile-specific keywords. In other words, think like someone who’s conducting a search with a mobile device. Words such as “near,” “closest,” “location” and “hours” should be incorporated into your content.
On the plus side, responsive design still allows you to have a single URL for a web page (google.com, for example, and not m.google.com).
Other seemingly more SEO-friendly options include adaptive design and RESS (Responsive Web Design + Server Side Components).
Perhaps we should be considering responsible design as opposed to responsive design. Just as there’s a no one-size-fits-all-devices web design, there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all decision for businesses when it comes to responsive design.
HTML5
While it may be too early to tell, HTML 5 appears to have both positive and negative impacts on SEO.
The positive
According to Kerry Dean at Search Engine Land, HTML5 is SEO friendly when it comes to website crawling and indexing. HTML5 allows for indexing of content such as graphics content added via plug-ins. It also includes many new tags, which will help with search engine ranking:
- <article> tag – allows to mark separate entries in an online publication (search engines will most likely weigh this content heavier)
- <aside> tag – for content related to the parent element
- <audio> tag – makes it easy to embed audio elements in your HTML
- <dialogue tag> – to identify conversations
- <footer> tag – can be used more than one time per page
- <header> tag – allows for more flexibility than the old H1, H2, H3 tags
- <nav> tag – for identifying links to other pages
- <section> tag – each section can have a separate HTML heading
- <video> tag – makes it easy to embed video elements in your HTML
Daniel Cristo at Search Engine Journal sings the SEO praises of these and other HTML5 features. He notes that “HTML5 provides several new ways for webmasters to instruct search engines on how to handle a particular link.” link to an author’s profile. This is especially useful for authors who are registered on Google+.
The negative
Keep in mind that not all HTML5 features are supported across all browsers. Before you implement any of the above, make sure it works where most of your audience “lives” online. Otherwise, the best SEO in the world won’t help you.
Parallax scrolling
Even if you’re not exactly sure what parallax scrolling is, you’ve probably experienced it on a website or in a video game. Parallax scrolling is a graphics technique that makes background images move slower than foreground images, creating a 2-D effect.
While parallax scrolling may be cool, many sites that use it have a one-page design. That’s a no-no for SEO. This can result in a super-heavy home page, which Google frowns upon.
There are a host of other SEO problems for sites with a one-page design, but these can be overcome.
The point is, don’t be afraid to adopt new web design techniques for fear of hurting your SEO. Instead, find out ways to get the most out of the technique… and out of your SEO.
