Design Has a Big Effect on SEO
Does design play a role in SEO? The first piece of evidence that design affects SEO is the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. What many people don’t realize is that Google still uses human search quality raters to evaluate web pages. These human raters look at web pages and see if they meet a certain set of criteria.
While these search quality raters do not directly influence search rankings, their findings are then given to Google engineers, who then try to incorporate human preferences into the search algorithm. Though Google’s ranking formula uses machine learning (an artificial intelligence known as RankBrain), this is still learning which results are most satisfying to your real-life, human customers.
What is important to realize is that humans still have input into what types of search results are preferred over others, and pleasing human visitors to your site should be your top SEO goal.
The concept that Google hammers home in the Search Guidelines is called E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Search raters are told to evaluate each site for these three characteristics. Expertise: does this organization know what they are talking about? Authority: is there evidence other people believe this organization knows what they are talking about? Trustworthiness: do I trust this site?
Human evaluators spend a few minutes examining the main content of the page before drawing a conclusion. They read the article, watch the video, look at the images, and make sure the functionality of the page is working correctly.
In other words, human raters look at the page as a whole, and not just the content in isolation.
The Google guidelines show example sites that have a clear hierarchy, expertly created content, and a positive reputation.
Interestingly, Google makes a distinction between a high-quality page and the highest quality. Best-in-class pages not only have high-quality content, but the reputation of the publisher and website are also impeccable. Yes, your off-site reputation can also affect your rankings.
One tidbit in the Search Quality Guidelines is that web pages are shown to be very high or of the highest quality “when created with a high degree of time and effort in particular expertise talent and skill”.
Could the design of the site play a role in being evaluated as “highest quality”? You bet it can.
Let’s look at the Google considers low-quality pages. According to their guidelines, page quality is low when:
The author of the website does not have enough expertise for the topic.
Your website is not trustworthy or authoritative.
The quality of the main content is low.
Whenever the site is difficult to use because it is distracting.
The website has a negative reputation.
Google evaluates not only the content, but also the way the page functions, and how much time, effort, expertise, and talent have gone into creating the page.
Objectively, it seems like Google is saying that a high-quality page will not only have the best content, but also have a publisher with a good reputation, and the overall experience of the site will be high-quality.
It’s interesting to note that they make it a point to say that the amount of talent, skill and expertise that went into the creation of the page should be a factor in evaluating the quality of the page.
Remember how Google looks at the trustworthiness of the site? Your customers look at your site and through the same lens.
When you look at your website as compared to the websites of your competitors, you may notice a pattern. The sites that usually ranked the highest not only have the best content, but usually have an up-to-date design.
Companies that pay attention to all aspects of their website, and continually work on improving it for customers, over time, will rank higher in search engines than companies that do nothing to improve their websites for customers.
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