Whether you’re creating your first blog or looking for ways to improve your existing website performance, there are some important aspects of a website that help improve the performance of your pages. From categorization to navigation, there are some essential characteristics of website design to create an attractive and user-friendly blog. Read on for some website enhancements you can do to improve your blog’s performance.
Ensure Easy Navigation
Without organized navigation across your different blog and landing pages, your website visitors will have a tough time exploring your site and finding the information they’re looking for. A well-designed navigation system allows your audience to easily locate specific posts, browse your different categories, and access important information like your contact info, about pages, and archives.
If your website visitors struggle to move across your website, this can easily become frustrating for the user. This frustration may cause your audience to leave your website in search of a better resource. A high bounce rate is never good for your website, so if your analytics show a high bounce rate, poor website navigation may be the source of your troubles.
While easy navigation creates a positive experience for your website visitors, it also makes it easier for search engine crawlers to index and scan your different pages for important information. While clean navigation positively impacts your overall website design, it also impacts how you show up in search results.
Don’t Overload Your Pages
While it can be tempting to try to fill your different website pages with as much information as you can and build your virtual world, overloading your pages is bad for website design due to several reasons.
For one, when a page gets overloaded with tons of features including written content, visual content, pop-ups, and more, it slows down the loading time it takes to populate your pages. Generally, readers don’t wait longer than 3-4 seconds for a page to load, so if your pages are taking any longer to load, you can expect your bounce rate to increase as people hop off your page in search of more-efficient resources.
In addition to a lowered user experience, overloading a page with too much content makes it look cluttered and disorganized. This can overwhelm your website visitors because it becomes difficult to find the resources they’re looking for. In addition, overloading your page may cause it to look spammy which could even make hackers more likely to target your site, page, or customers.
While users should be able to easily read through your pages, too much content also negatively impacts search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines tend to prioritize pages that are well-organized and easy to navigate, so overloading your blog with content can lower your search rankings.
Use Categories
Website categories are essential to creating an attractive and user-friendly blog. Categories help organize your content and make it easy for users to find the resources they want. Categories allow for improved navigation, therefore improving user experience while on your website. Creating an organized blog allows users to spend more time on your website and bring more traffic to your domain.
While categorization is important, there should be some kind of logic and intuition when creating categories for your blog. Users should easily be able to understand the logic behind your categories and should improve their ability to find specific resources. Not only does this improve the website experience for your users, but it also makes it easier for you to manage your website.
In addition to making it easy for you and your visitors to browse through different pages, categorization is also essential to good SEO practices. By providing clear and descriptive labels for your content pieces. Search engines will have an easier time understanding what your content is about so they can more easily index your website. Categories help search engines improve discoverability and provide users with entry points to your blog.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
While it’s essential to optimize your website for desktop users, you should also be mindful of mobile users and ensure your website performs just as well for mobile users. As more and more internet browsers opt for searching via mobile phones, mobile optimization becomes increasingly important.
As mentioned above, in addition to optimizing your website’s load speed for desktop users, you should also make improvements for mobile users as well. Optimizing your blog posts for mobile will also be helpful in making your content more shareable in case you start a social media campaign or partner with an influencer.
In addition to improving mobile user experience, for a website to be mobile-friendly your users should be able to access your website from anywhere at any time while using their mobile devices. By implementing load speed improvements for mobile users. You not only improve accessibility but allow for better search engine rankings.
Search engines, such as Google prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their search results because of the large volume of mobile users that exist. This means that a well-performing mobile website version is more likely to rank higher in search results, increasing the visibility and traffic to your website.
Implement Keywords in Your Content
While you should avoid keyword stuffing, you should be researching relevant keywords for your blog. Depending on the niche your blog covers, there are various keywords commonly used in your niche. By implementing relevant keywords into your content, you not only dictate to search engines what your content is about, but you’ll rank higher in search result pages for queries containing your keywords.
Every keyword is associated with a monthly search volume. This number indicates how many times a query including the specific keyword was used. Keywords with a monthly search volume of zero won’t benefit your blog because no one is searching those topics. However, better-performing keywords are searched frequently. By using keywords that are relevant to your blog and are commonly searched in search engines, you help bring more traffic back to your website.
For example, if your blog is in the lifestyle niche, you may have posts offering style guides, how to improve a beauty routine, and more. Taking the example of improving your beauty routine, some relevant keywords to include in your content might be “skincare routines” “improving acne” “skincare products” and other keywords that apply to the nature of your post
Add the right visual content
Having the right visuals in your blog is a surefire way to capture attention and keep readers engaged. One cost-efficient way to include visuals in your blog posts is with the use of stock photos. However, stock photos have a reputation for a cheesy, artificial appearance. This means it’s important to seek only authentic-looking stock images that convey real human emotion to incorporate into your blog.
Conclusion
While many aspects dictate how your blog performs, it’s a combination of these tactics that make for a well-designed website. With some of the tips mentioned above, you’re on your way to improving your blog’s performance, from increased traffic to a lowered bounce rate.
About the author
Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.
