All companies want a website that improves brand visibility. Most have their own ideas of what a good website should be, or consider making a good offer the only objective and are satisfied with what’s really a bad design. Productive websites require some careful planning to improve the customer experience and promote your brand.

Use Your Links

The native links you have within your content can also be effective for building your online footprint. Generic links that are just a button and a common phrase like “Click Here!” have no SEO value beyond the associated URL. Instead of a generic phrase, take the opportunity to use keywords. Describe as briefly as possible what the link destination is about. Rather than use generic image names like “button1.gif”, rename the image file in the same way with additional keywords.

Remember the Alt Tag

The HTML “alt” tag describes a webpage element in case it doesn’t show up in the user’s browser. The alt description you provide will identify even content that users can’t see. This tag is part of the page content and is considered by SEO crawl-bots when indexing your page. It can be added to not just images, but also video, audio, and more. This will help to index your specific content with the search engines, even if users never see the textual description. When they do, alt tags are useful on link buttons, so that even someone with an incompatible browser can navigate your site.

Optimize Site Speed

The load speed of your pages and content are also important factors in your SEO ranking. Consistently sluggish sites will rank lower. It degrades the user experience (UX). Impatient users won’t appreciate your content if they have to wait for it. In fact, 40 percent of visitors will abandon slow websites. Wait times are frustrating for visitors. It’s unprofessional and reflects poorly on your brand. Test your load speeds and find ways to maximize it, such as moving to a faster web host and cutting back on images or slow-running scripts.

Focus on a Good User Experience

One way to gauge the value of your content is checking the time-on-page stats in you site analytics. The more time users spend on a particular page, the more engrossed they are with it’s content. Useful information, attractive visuals, and intuitive navigation provide a good UX. To encourage user engagement, you should also use interactive elements, such as user forms or mapping software. You’ll find a good example of this at Wheaton World Wide Moving as their site has a layout that allows users to easily access the information that they are looking for without it having to be too much of a chase to find what information one needs.

While websites for different purposes have different designs, these ideas help with any online layout. Providing the best possible UX is what will keep visitors coming back.

Author's Bio: 

Hannah Whittenly is a freelance writer and mother of two from Sacramento, CA. She enjoys kayaking and reading books by the lake.