Client Question: How does site appearance affect search engine optimisation?

Here’s a question we had from a client recently:

From a search engine optimisation point of view, design probably doesn’t matter at all?

Rephrased, how does site appearance affect SEO?

Generally, as far as search engine optimisation and actual outward site appearance are concerned, 99% of the time there is no direct link. The important thing from an SEO standpoint is the layout and content of the HTML source code behind the scenes.

There is a concept called “Semantic HTML” where the appearance of the site is completely decoupled from the content. The HTML describes the intent of the code, rather than the appearance. In semantic HTML the latter is handled by code called CSS, which tells the web browser how the content should be displayed.

Search engines like semantic HTML because it makes their life easier – it is easy to tell that:

SEMANTIC: <H2>this is an important headline no matter it’s appearance</H2>, whereas

NON-SEMANTIC: <P><FONT SIZE=”+2”>this is just another paragraph despite appearing larger than other paragraphs.</FONT></P>

BUT (there’s always a but) your site’s appearance or design can have a huge indirect effect on SEO in that people will more often link to a professional or impressive looking site from their own websites, and in-bound links to a site are very important (in fact the most important factor) in Google rankings. People are far less likely to link to sites that look amateur or badly designed unless there is a compelling reason (important resources, etc).

The other issue then with a business site is that you may need to project a certain image or gravitas. You’d need to decide what image you are projecting and ensure that the appearance reflects this and is appropriate to your visitor demographic.

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