The first step towards success for any online business is to focus on the need user and everything else will fall in place on its own. However, not many SEO professionals have understood the true meaning of this step and have been cramming the web pages with keywords and crafting them for web crawlers merely.

Remember that such an SEO strategy may have worked like wonders some 10 years ago, it has become somewhat invalid since Google and other search engines have come a long way from there. The sophistication today, especially for Google is such that the designing aspect for UX (user experience) holds more significance than merely designing for the sake of SEO (search engine optimization).

Having said that, ignoring SEO in its entirety is not an ideal thing to do as well. In fact, SEO and UX are rather complementary. Certain elements of both of the aspects are equally contributing in affecting the Google’s ability to crawl. This means that web designers need to strike the right balance between the two when they are to design, not to forget that the user needs to be taken into account. So here’s what you need to do:

Go Mobile

A mobile-friendly update from Google in April 2015 ensured a boost in ranking of websites so that they are legible and functional on mobile devices. This has added another responsibility for businesses to add responsive web design Dubai websites to go mobile. You may also utilize dynamic serving and separate URLs for the similar purpose. Nonetheless, responsive websites work the best. But why is it all important to the user? So that regardless of the platform user utilizes to browse the website, the experience is familiar and mobile-friendly.

Use Infinite Scroll Wisely

Infinite scroll is when there’s more content loading as the user scrolls down to the bottom of the page. It keeps the user engaged and so is considered to be quite a friendly idea for a sleek UX design. Pinterest is a good example that uses infinite scroll efficiently. However, the content visible to user will remain invisible to Google in a setting like this. If you are not to forfeit it then perhaps paginated series can do the trick. These pages of content can be used in support to infinite scroll so that fast load times are experienced as users find it easy to get their hands on the content they wanted. Another misconception that follows is keeping the content ‘above the fold’ for users may or may not scroll. That isn’t entirely true anymore for the users as they do scroll.

Avoid Heavy Images

Images are awesome in conveying the right information in an appealing way. But if you are planning to user stock images or those that are poorly executed then perhaps content can do a lot better job than those images. But if you do insert images, ensure that you include descriptive file names and include appropriate alt text. As you surround the image with relevant text and don’t hide important text within image, Google will be able to read the images. So keeping a balance between text and images is of utmost importance for the sake of SEO and using quality images are mandatory for better visuals.

Break Down Lengthy Forms

Lengthy forms sometimes turn away the users so it’s strongly suggested that in the matter of a simple registration, such as delivering an e-book directly to the users’ mailbox, only ask for a name and a valid email address and you’re good to go. Sometimes, however, lengthy forms are necessary in order to extract all the information, for example for registering with an ecommerce store. In such a scenario, inquiring lots of information on one page will be asking too much of a user in an instance. Therefore, break the form down in several pages so that there is little information inquiry on a single page. Also, allow users to see how much of the form they are left with. Do so with the help of a process completion bar or add a description of number of pages. While breaking up related content in so many pages is a bad practice but lucky for us this does not apply for the form.

Approaching a website design with the intention of making it SEO friendly in its entirety, or UX friendly only, is rather an unwise approach. Why do that when there are ways you can satisfy both the aspects? So balance the two with a greater focus on user and you’ll do just fine!