The new meta in web design is having a mobile-friendly website. In fact, Google has been using mobile-first indexing since 2019, which means they primarily use the mobile version of your website for crawling and indexing. So that means, if your website isn't optimised for phones, your search engine rankings could actually get worse. Even if you have great content or technical SEO.

If you're not sure how to fix this, you can start with checking off the basics:

• Use a responsive design that adjusts to different screen sizes and orientations automatically.
• Compress your images and use web-friendly formats like JPEG and PNG to reduce page loading time.
• Ensure your website is compatible with different mobile browsers.
• Use legible fonts that are easy to read on small screens.
• Use touch-friendly buttons and links that are easy to click.

A good user experience boils down to a well-organised and easy-to-navigate website. If users can't find what they're looking for, they're more likely to leave your website and look for information elsewhere. To Google, this is a big signal telling them your website is bad and should not rank higher.

Here's a couple ideas from top-performing website that you can use:

• Use a clear and concise menu that's easy to use at a glance.
• Use descriptive labels for your menu items to help users understand what to expect on each page.
• Ensure that your website's structure is logical and easy to understand.
• Use breadcrumbs to help users keep track of their location within your website.
• Provide a search bar to help users find information quickly.

Creating high-quality content is one of the most important factors to take care of. Not only does it help to establish your authority in your industry, but it directly helps to grow your organic traffic. However, it's not just about creating content for the sake of SEO, we need to think about user experience before anything. Your content should actually be informative for users, engaging, and easy to read.

Click here to learn how to create content targeted to your customers without being stuck for ideas or wasting hours on research.

Here are some general guidelines to stick to:

• Use short paragraphs and sentences to make your content easy to read.
• Use headings and subheadings to break up large blocks of text and make your content scannable.
• Use bullet points and lists to make your content more readable.
• Use images, videos, and infographics to make your content more engaging.
• Use a conversational tone to make your content more relatable.

Slow loading times usually ends up in users leaving the website in search for another instead of yours. If you have fast loading times, not only will this send a positive signal to search engines to help you rank higher, but users will also be more likely to stay engaged on your website.

Click here to read our article on how to boost your SEO with faster website speed.

For now, you can try these:

• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to speed up content delivery.
• Compress your images and use web-friendly formats like JPEG and PNG to reduce page loading time.
• Use browser caching to reduce server requests.
• Minimize HTTP requests by reducing the number of scripts and stylesheets used on your page.
• Use a fast web hosting service.

Finally, making your website accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities, is not only the right thing to do, but it's also helping you directly. The more accessible your website it, the higher engagement will be throughout all users on your website, and that's a positive signal for seach engines to rank you higher.

Making your website accessible may seem complex, here's a few ideas to help you to think in the right way:

• Use descriptive alt tags for images to help users with visual impairments.
• Provide closed captions for videos to help users with hearing impairments.
• Ensure your website is navigable using a keyboard to help users with mobility impairments.
• Use high-contrast colors to help users with color blindness.
• Use descriptive link text to help users understand where a link will take them.
• Provide text transcripts for audio content to help users with hearing impairments.