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The following post is a guest post written by Jenny Belanger, owner of Jenny B Designs. Jenny is a frequent collaborator and friend of Aloha Life Digital.
I especially love her attention to creating sites that convert to leads and sales, because after all, she and I are both here to help people grow their businesses.
Jenny is a designer who has really made time to understand SEO and as a result, and her clients’ sites are so much more effective for it.
I’ll leave you in her very capable hands.
Claire.
SEO Expert and Founder of Aloha Life Digital
Designing a website that connects with human visitors while also appealing to search engines can feel like a scary thing.
On one side, we have the desire to include beautiful and stunning visuals that draws in and engages the actual people who visit your website.
On the other, we have the algorithms of search engines, looking for optimized content and technical perfection.
Striking the right balance between these two is a challenge but one that can be done, and done well, and is a necessity for success in today’s online world.
Understanding the Two Audiences — Human and Search Engines
Now, let’s chat about the two main audiences your website needs to connect with — humans and search engines. Both are important, but they come with their own set of expectations. A successful website needs to impress real visitors while also satisfying the criteria set by search engines. It’s not about picking one over the other—it’s about making them work in harmony. And it can be done!
A. What Humans Look for in a Website
When humans land on your website, they want a good experience, plain and simple. Visual appeal is one of the first things they’ll notice. We all know that first impressions matter, and a beautiful, cohesive design that reflects your personality and brand can draw people in immediately. Colors, fonts, and imagery should feel like they belong together—consistent and representative of your brand's personality. Something I rely heavily on in my designs.
Next comes navigation. Your visitors don’t want to work hard to find what they’re looking for. An intuitive and simple layout that allows users to seamlessly click from one page to another without confusion is a huge factor in whether they stick around or leave. Clear menus (always 5 items or less), buttons that make sense, and easy access to important content—these are the building blocks of great user experience.
Finally, people crave engaging content. It's what keeps them on your site after the design has grabbed their attention. Relevant, helpful, and authentic copy can make the difference between a visitor becoming a client or walking away. And of course imagery and video also helps form that emotional connection. So, while the design makes them pause, it's your content that convinces them to take action.
B. What Search Engines Prioritize
Now, let's talk about the second audience—search engines. Unlike humans, search engines aren’t there to form an emotional connection with beautiful images or clever copywriting. They rely on algorithms to assess how well your site is performing in terms of structure, content, and usability.
Search engines love relevant, high-quality content. This means your website should answer the questions people are typing into search bars. The more useful and comprehensive your content, the better your chances of ranking higher. But it's not just about keywords anymore—the machines are smarter now! They want content that’s informative, well-structured, and genuinely helpful to users.
Then there is technical optimization. This covers everything from page speed to mobile-friendliness. If your site takes too long to load or isn’t optimized for smartphones and tablets, search engines will notice—and it can hurt your rankings. So ensuring your website is fast, responsive, and accessible on all devices is critical for both SEO and users!
Lastly, site structure and navigation matter. Search engines crawl your website’s pages, and they need a clear structure to understand what each page is about. Clean URLs, properly labeled headers, and easy-to-follow menus not only help visitors but also guide search engines in categorizing your content correctly. This helps boost your visibility in search results.
The Intersection of Beautiful Design and SEO
Here’s where things get interesting — combining beautiful, personality packed design with search engine optimization. It’s often assumed that what works for humans won’t work for search engines, but actually that is not true. They both complement each other. And it makes for a beautiful marriage.
A. User Experience (UX) as a Ranking Factor
Google has made it clear that user experience plays a huge role in determining rankings. A beautifully designed website that is easy to navigate and keeps users engaged will often perform better in search results. Why? Because search engines track metrics like bounce rate (leaving your site quickly) and time spent on site. If visitors are sticking around and clicking through multiple pages, it signals to search engines that your website is offering valuable content.
Good design naturally improves this. If your site is visually appealing, loads quickly, and offers intuitive navigation, users are less likely to leave right away. This lowers your bounce rate and increases the average time users spend on your site—both of which are positive signals for search engines.
By focusing on user experience, you're effectively doing two things at once — making your website attractive to visitors while boosting its SEO potential.
B. Visual Hierarchy and SEO
Visual hierarchy plays a huge role in making your website not just beautiful, but also effective. It’s all about guiding the user’s eyes to the most important parts of your site. And, fun fact, search engines care about this too — just in a different way.
When it comes to SEO, visual hierarchy can help search engines understand what’s most important on a page. One of the simplest ways to do this is by using headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to break up content. The H1 tag should be reserved for your main headline, signaling to search engines that this is the page’s primary focus. Subsequent headings (H2, H3, and so on) should be used to structure the page logically, making it easy for both visitors and search engines to follow along.
Beyond text, design elements like bold fonts, contrast, and color help direct attention to key areas. While this benefits your human audience by making important information easy to spot, it also aids search engines in identifying the critical content on the page. So, a clear, logical layout isn’t just a design win—it’s an SEO boost too.
C. Image Optimization
Images are super important for creating a visually appealing website, but they can also be a potential problem. High-quality images can significantly slow down your website if not optimized properly, and that can hurt your SEO. I love telling people to “visit the Panda” using a tool like tinypng to make the photos as small as possible but still preserving their quality.
And pay attention to where and how you place your images. Images should support the text, not overwhelm it. Use them to enhance the message you’re trying to convey, while keeping load time and page speed in mind. This ensures that both your visitors and search engines are happy.
Strategies for Creating Visually Appealing, SEO-Friendly Websites
So now that you know the basics of balancing design with SEO, let’s chat strategy.
A. Responsive Design
I think we all know that more people than not are visiting your website from their phone. And if your website isn’t responsive, (meaning it looks good on all devices) you’re losing visitors—and search engine ranking points. Not only is this super important for user experience, but Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites in its rankings.
One trick I use is to avoid overly complex designs that might look amazing on a large monitor but not so much on a small screen. I prefer to keep things minimal. This includes limiting (or hiding) additional photos that appear on the desktop experience. On mobile I just want the user to know the important things and encourage them to take action. No more than necessary. Remember, usually the user is multi-taking when on their phones so keep it super simple.
B. Content Layout and Formatting
While the content (words and images) is important, how you lay things out is equally so. A huge chunk of text without any breaks can easily overwhelm people, causing them to leave. I really encourage you to consider the use of white space effectively. It’s such an important piece of the puzzle, an opportunity to break up content and make your site feel more spacious. When designing I always encourage myself to see what I can remove. And once I do that, it makes everything that is left so much more powerful. And of course, if it’s a better experience, humans will stay on your site longer and google will be happier.
C. Brand Personality – Your Colors and Fonts
When it comes to the design, I’m all about bringing your brand personality to life with your colors and fonts. These are super powerful tools in your arsenal. They truly shape the mood, tone and overall feel of your site and form that emotional connection you need in order to resonate with visitors. But here’s the important bit — these both also help with the search engines!
Your fonts. While I do love a beautiful accent script or a fun bold font, those are just a decorative touch. You want to avoid using unreadable fonts for the bulk of your content. They can hurt your readability and search engines definitely favor “web safe” fonts. Keep your body and main headers to something classy and personality packed but legible. And save those scripts for a simple accent here or there.
Same goes for colors. They can evoke certain emotions and by using them properly you can encourage users to take action. But the important part is that you want to ensure there is enough contrast between your text and the background. Not only is it best practice and benefits the user but it is also something search engines look at.
D. Navigation and Site Structure
And finally, last but probably most important, is your navigation. It is the backbone of any website, for both users and search engines. And a confused or cluttered menu can cause visitors to get frustrated and leave. But a menu done right encourages them to explore and to take action.
When it comes to SEO, it is absolutely essential to create a clear site structure, one that site engines can crawl. The menu should be simple, I always suggest 5 items or less, that are logical and encourage the visitor to go on a clear journey. For services providers who I typically work with, a great menu could consist of services (that could be a drop down with the names of your services) about, contact and then the button with your main action. And if you have a blog or podcast, they could be an option under resources.
Keeping things simple helps not only the user but also the search engines.
V. Case Study: A Website That Excel in Both Design and SEO
To bring all of these points home, let’s look at a real-world example of a website I designed that manages to excel in both beauty and personality but also SEO.
This website is for Pets at Peace. They provide end of life care for pets on the North Shore, in Greater Boston, Southern New Hampshire, and surrounding areas. Their brand is clean, modern, gentle and beautiful. With a simple clean color palette and body font with an accent script that is only there for effect, not for readability. The navigation menu is simple, 4 items and a button utilizing drop downs, with proper structure on the backend utilizing keywords and proper heading tags, H1 to H5.
Conclusion
Balancing beautiful design with effective SEO doesn’t have to be one or the other. By prioritizing the user experience and customer journey, which means optimizing your content and visuals, you can create a website that is not only beautiful and personality packed but also search engine-friendly.
About the Author:
Jenny Belanger is the CEO and Creative Director of JennyB Designs, a website design studio.
She helps entrepreneurs and small businesses build websites that communicate and connect with visitors and attract their ideal clients.
She is also the host of the Website Design Made Simple Podcast sharing easy ways small business owners can make more money with their websites.
Jenny understands that building a brand and website can be overwhelming. She strives to simplify the process so that busy entrepreneurs can be proud of their online presence, land more clients, and get back to business.
My name's Claire and I’m an SEO and content strategy expert. I help startups and ambitious businesses improve their content, so that customers can find your website in search, and so that when they do, they convert.
I’m a former startup CEO, and I’ve worked for some of the world’s biggest publishers (Penguin Random House, Oxford University Press), as well as training with Google's in-house SEO team. I even built a website to attract 45k in organic search visitors/month. Drop me a line if you need help of any kind with SEO and content.
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