Effective Web design is about much more than making a pretty Web site. A good custom Web design incorporates usability and functionality, not just on the front end where the customers are but in the back-end, where you and your staff have to manage everything and keep it up to date. The ability to easily and intelligently incorporate local SEO into blog posts, advertising and social media is a vital part of any custom Web design or template. These Web design and local SEO best practices can help you determine whether or not your website design company is doing right by you.
Embrace the Mobile Market
Mobile is a growing market and if you’re not addressing it, you’re going to miss out. In design terms, that means using responsive Web design to ensure that your website is easily navigable on a tablet or smartphone. In SEO terms, it means adding another layer to your keyword research: mobile specific keywords. The fact is that people search differently on their tablets and phones than they do on a desktop. Understanding the abbreviations and shortcuts people use in mobile apps will help you tailor your local SEO efforts to all platforms.
KISS It, Baby
Designing sites that load fast has always been a priority in custom Web design, but it’s more important than ever now. People are far more impatient on mobiles than they are on a desktop. If the page they want isn’t fully loaded within 5 seconds, they’re likely to just swipe away. What’s the solution? Pare your pages down to quickly deliver exactly the information the user wants or you risk losing a potential customer who couldn’t be bothered to look past the first screen.
Tag Your Graphics
Graphics are important. A good picture will snag someone’s attention a whole lot faster than a block of text, especially on a smaller screen. But search engines still rely on text to help them deliver relevant images to searchers, so it’s vital that you tag your images with locally relevant keywords. It’s not enough to just drop local place names into your keywords and tags, either. You need to consider the local lingo when tagging. You won’t get many hits on the keyword “grinders” if everyone in your region calls them “subs” or “torpedoes.”
Local SEO and effective custom Web design are especially important for small businesses that derive most of their revenue from face to face business. The national chains just can’t do real local SEO as well as someone who is truly local can, so make sure your Web design company presses your advantage with good design and great searchabilty.