Design or SEO: Which is More Important?

Any consultant with expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) will tell you that SEO is the most crucial aspect of your website. What good is designing a pretty website if no one can find it via search?

A pure designer, on the other hand, if left to their own devices will create a beautifully artistic online representation of your company that may not have any value for search.

So which is more important? The answer is both.

It is not necessary to sacrifice good aesthetic design to get good search rankings. One way to ensure this is by making sure the web design firm you hire has an SEO expert on staff, or by hiring one externally to work with your designers. Having these two parties work together on your behalf will help you get the most for your web design dollar.

A great resource for making sure your site is SEO friendly is Google Webmaster Tools, a set of tips and tools for your reference when creating your site. It focuses on both technical nuts-and-bolts like page titles, page descriptions, site maps, and code validation as well as content issues like header tags, keyword density, and text- and image-labeling.

It’s not necessary to have a plain-jane website in order to gain search ranking. Today’s designers can make beautiful websites that satisfy SEO standards. Do your homework, work with your designer, and don’t be afraid to bring in an expert.