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A Crash Course In Broken Link Building

Broken link building is just one of many backlinking strategies used to acquire links to your website. The short summary of how to execute a broken link building campaign is:

  • Find a website that would be ideal to link from to your site,
  • Identify any links on the site which are broken (the target page no longer exists)
  • Create content to replace the link
  • Contact the site owner to have the link replaced with your own

In a recent outreach article, I asked Brian Dean what strategy he thought was the most effective link building strategies for 2020 and broken link building was his immediate response.

Brian Dean names broken link building as the most effective link building strategy in 2020

Brian, who is one of the industry’s most well known SEO’s, boasted a 10% conversion rate on his latest campaign. This is an important point because when you set out to accomplish your link building campaigns you should set some realistic expectations.

Most people do not welcome email that essentially is a request for a link. If you’ve ever run an outreach campaign, it can be frustrating at times with the response you receive. If a 10% conversion rate is an above-average result, you can expect to hear deafening silence from over 90% of the webmasters you contact.

This is what makes broken link building a more attractive method of acquiring backlinks. Your outreach email is based on providing value for all parties involved.

  • The website owner improves the UX and the SEO of their site
  • The users are not taken to an error page
  • You receive a juicy backlink

Automate broken link building with software

The best way to go about broken link building is to automate the process with software. Ahrefs seems to be the best option for identifying broken links because their software will scan an entire website and list every link that is broken.

The poor mans version of this process would involve a manual discovery whereby you would be required to go page by page and use an extension to highlight broken links. You can download an extension such as broken backlink checker (a bit out-dated) or check my links (recommended), both of which you can find in Chrome.

Build a list of prospects

The best option for the most success is to target sites that would have a lot of links pointing to their pages. You want to be able to find a broken link that not only one site owner will be happy to replace, but a number of site owners. If there is a missing page that 100 people have linked to, your chances of acquiring links go way up.

Make a list of the top sites in your industry. Shoot for the stars. Target domains with high authority and decent amount of traffic.

Plug your prospect site into Ahrefs and click on the inbound links. You can then click on the broken link tab to pull up a list of links that need replacing.

Choose topics to compliment your niche

When you’re looking at links to replace you will need to choose content that best suits your specialty.

Find links to pages that you are able to write quality content unless you’re outsourcing a freelancer to do your writing.

Although you are bringing a broken link to the attention of the site owner, you will still need to provide a good piece of content that will earn the link.

Hindsight is 20/20

If you’ve never used the Wayback Machine, get ready for journey back in time. This particular marvel of a site will show you what the page used to look like before it was deleted or moved. This is an important part of the process because you need to set the standard for the content your replacement page will need to cover.

Assemble the troops

Now that you have content that rivals your successor, you will need to get it in front of those who have linked to the page. Type in the URL of the broken link into Ahrefs and get a list of the sites that are linking to that page. You now have your list of sites to approach for link replacement.

Find the right email addresses

This part of the process can be automated with software like Hunter. Hunter offers a free option but if you want to find hundreds of email addresses in one fell swoop you can opt for the paid version and upload the list of websites.

You may want to rifle through your results in order to make sure you are sending your outreach to the right person. List your prospects on a spreadsheet in order to set yourself up for a template email approach.

Automate your outreach

Ninja Outreach can be your best friend for saving time in the outreach process. Your approach to contacting webmasters is already packed with value so make your email as simple as possible. Here is an example of what will get the best response.

Broken link building outreach email

Pay it forward

One twist to this method that many SEO’s overlooks is the potential to appease the fourth party. Everyone in the broken link building method seems to win-except one. The website who lost the link.

You can pay it forward and show appreciation for their loss by linking to their content. By giving the previous link holder a link from your content you really are creating a winning situation for all parties involved.

Conclusion

Consider the number of people who are spamming sites and asking for favours and this method of link building becomes more attractive by showing upfront value.

The truth is you can scale up your link building by using this strategy as opposed to the more time-consuming methods, such as guest posting.

As one of many tools you can use in your link building arsenal, broken link building tends to get a higher response rate than simply asking someone to link to your content.

Don’t be discouraged by dismal response rates. Outreach, in general, is riddled with a lack of response. The average conversion on an outreach link building strategy is somewhere around 8%. If you can get to that number or above, you’ve outperformed the standard, cleaned up the internet and acquired some juicy backlinks for your site.

Related reading: How To Write SEO Optimized Blog Posts

Whitby Local SEO Tactics To Rank On First Page

The growth of your business is not something that should be left to chance. Take control of the future of your company by making sure those that are looking for your products and services can find you. Strong local SEO will get your site ranked highly on Google for local search results. Whitby local SEO is one of the go-to sources for lead generation and new clients for a local business in Whitby.

The value of appearing in the organic local search results is obvious. Why not be found by people who are actively searching for your product? No matter if you’re a new business or have been around for years, you can increase the number of people who find you by improving your SEO.

The fastest way to make this happen is to hire an SEO company in Whitby. However, if you’re feeling brave enough, here are two major tasks to accomplish to make your website rank higher in the local organic search results.

  1. Optimize your website
  2. Build local backlinks

Improve your on-page SEO for searches in Whitby

The process for optimizing your website starts by making sure you have adequate content on your website. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is making sure you have covered the content topics of your business. The ultimate goal is to answer every possible question a visitor may have who lands on your site by publishing local content about your company and what it offers.

Part of this process requires building a blog with linkable assets. Not only does this serve as a resource for your clients and potential customers, but also it gives other websites a reason to link to your site.

Google bases a large part of its ranking criteria on the trustworthiness of your site. Is your site credible, authoritative and considered a source for expert opinion? Building a blog that generates traffic and backlinks demonstrates these qualities.

If you are knowledgeable about your business and can publish content to teach people about it in an organized manner, you are about halfway to owning a website that ranks highly. The two biggest areas to spend time on will be your content and backlinks.

Use as many optimization tactics as possible to improve your on-page SEO. Once you have built an optimized website, the final task to improve ranking ability is to acquire quality backlinks.

Whitby local link building strategy

Competing on a global level allows you to find websites from anywhere in the world to link to you. The challenge is how to get the websites with the greatest amount of authority to link to your site. This is the same concept for local SEO but within your target city.

A local business can use links from around the world to build authority to a website, however, they don’t have the same power to create a local presence. Acquiring links from websites in your target city are the most powerful backlinks for ranking in that city.

Think of links as referrals

A link from another website is similar to a referral from another business. Collect the most trusted types of referrals for your website to see the greatest gains in your site’s ranking. The more quality referrals your website acquires, the more convincing it is to search engines to rank your site closer to the number one position.

Let’s assume that you are in the market to buy a swimming pool. You ask two people for referrals on who they believe to have the best reputation for quality. One of the people you ask runs a bakery, and the other is another pool manufacturer. Whose opinion do you think would be more knowledgeable?

Obviously the person who is in the same industry should have more insight into the business. Think of the links you acquire from websites in the same way. The more relevance your links have to the keyword you are trying to rank for, the more powerful they are in moving your site to the top of the search results.

How do I find local sites in Whitby to link to my website?

The beauty of local SEO is that you can limit your search to the city you are trying to rank highly in. Resource page link building is an effective strategy to find sites that have pages that link to useful sites, suppliers and vendors. Here’s how you can execute a resource page link building strategy.

Create a list of link prospects

There will obviously be a tiered level of the quality of links you will find, so your first task will be to make a list of prospective links to choose from. You can start your search by typing the following into Google:

[your keyword] + [your city] inurl:links

The search results will list websites that are associated with your keyword and city and have the word “links” in the URL. For example, if your company does landscaping in Whitby, this would be a search you could perform to find relevant links:

landscaping Whitby inurl:links

To produce these results:

Resources page link building example of a Whitby local seo strategy

If you take a look at the first result, it is a site located in Oshawa, which is next to Whitby. This means it isn’t the best type of link if you’re targeting Whitby however, it is extremely relevant because it’s the next town and it’s a gardening site. This is a link prospect you would want to pursue.

You can repeat this search replacing variations of your keyword to generate different results. You can also replace the word you tell Google to look for in the URL with another probable word such as “resource” or “resources”.

[your keyword] + [your city] inurl:resources

The goal is to get links from the sites that are closely related to yours. If there is a slight connection you can still use those types of links to tie in your website to your city for a stronger local presence.

Tier 1 vs. tier 2 links

Separate your list into two tiers based on the relevance of the link prospect. If the website is not in your industry but is in your city, you would consider it a tier two link. Your first tier consists of the websites you will contact first because they are in your city and relevant to your business.

Make contact with relevant sites

This stage of the outreach process is the first of a two-pronged approach. You want to make contact with the website owner first before you go asking them for favours. At the end of the day, you’re asking other sites to give you a link so you don’t want your first impression to repel the owner or for your email to be dismissed as spam.

Here is an example of an email that will get your prospect warmed up to the idea of giving you a link to your site simply because you aren’t asking for anything.

Example of Whitby resource page link building outreach email

The ask

Once you’ve sent this email, follow up with a second email, asking for the link to your site. What is proven to do wonders for your success rate is to offer value to your prospect as a way gaining more favour and encouraging them to give you what you want.

Avoid link exchanges

Try to avoid reciprocal links. A few instances of where you link to another site and they link back may not harm your site, but too many link exchanges may have an adverse effect on your site’s ranking. It’s ok to engage in a few, but if your backlink profile is all link exchanges, you run the risk of being flagged for unnatural link building.

Offer value by finding broken links

One way to offer value is notifying the prospect of any broken links to their site. By using the Chrome extension “broken link checker” you can quickly identify any broken links on the resource page and let the webmaster know about it.

example of finding broken links for whitby landscaping link prospects
Example of using Broken Link Checker to find the broken links on a page

Your next email can go something like this:

The ask email that informs the webmaster of broken link and asks for the link to your site.
“The Ask” email

Follow up

Make it a point to follow up on your link requests to make sure your emails were not in vain. It may turn out that the Webmaster has added your link but hasn’t bothered to respond. Check the resource page before emailing a follow up email.

In some cases, it may even work out better to pick up the phone and call. If you can get to the right person who makes the decisions on the website you can get a straight answer. It helps to add a little personality to your efforts-just make sure you aren’t’ too pushy.

Gauge your results

When you get a link to your site, gauge your results. It should only take a day or two to see the effects of your link. If your niche isn’t that competitive you may be able to see large gains in ranking with just a few links. At any rate, the number of relevant local links you acquire will have the greatest impact on moving your ranking.

Resource link building is a Whitby local SEO strategy that is highly effective in getting your website found in the local organic search results. Explore what your city has to offer in terms of the resource pages offered by local businesses. You may be able to form alliances and make the connections with the companies that will catapult your website to the first page of Google.

How To Use Cambridge SEO To Increase Revenue

The way we do business has evolved substantially over the last decade. Most people are completely reliant on their cell phones for making purchase decisions. From researching a product or company, comparing options and then finding a location to make a purchase-it’s mostly done by searching Google. Your business can benefit from being found in hundreds of searches by investing in Cambridge SEO.

Spend time identifying how people search

The first major step in creating a site that generates traffic is to perform adequate research in finding the right keywords. Keyword research has become the new market research.

It’s not just finding high volume search terms but also finding out what keywords are closely related, what is most likely to be searched within the topic, and the most trending issues that are commonly searched.

Cambridge SEO is somewhat simple if you know how to get the most out of your website by targeting the right audience. You can come to a fairly accurate assessment of the most beneficial keywords to your company by performing some simple searches and using free tools available to everyone.

Brain storm a list of options

The first step is to list the terms that you believe your company will benefit from the most. This step should typically be a list that describes services and products.

Type each of those potential keywords, into Google

Immediately you should get a drop-down of other popular searches, however, those same keywords will appear at the bottom of the page after you hit enter.

Drop down options for Google search on invisalign Cambridge

There are two things you will need to check on a search result page that will indicate the relevance and difficulty of the keyword in question.

Qualify your keyword based on the competition

Are the list of sites that appear direct competitors with your company? If a keyword is truly valuable to the industry in which you compete you should see the search result listing populated by companies with similar offerings to your own. This would indicate the keyword is a term that will generate traffic that converts to clients.

The second indication that the list of sites will indicate is the level of difficulty that your keyword represents. Are the major competitors in your industry ranking in the top 10 spots? Have these websites been around for years? Do they have hundreds of backlinks that may prove difficult to acquire within an acceptable timeframe?

Ahrefs backlink checker result for the number one site for search term Invisalign Cambridge

You can check the backlinks of any website using Ahrefs free backlink checker. It’s probably the best at producing the most comprehensive list of backlinks. If there are backlinks that you can also acquire, it’s one indication a top ranking for that keyword is attainable.

Google SERP Features

Another area of improving your Cambridge SEO is assessing the type of Google SERP Features (SERP=search engine result page). Google uses approximately 20 different features on the first page of results to make information easier to find.

The major features that are most commonly found are the Local Finder, Google Ads, Carousels (video, advertisements, shopping, images) and knowledge panels.

Local Finder listing for Cambridge SEO search results for invisalign Cambridge

If any of these features appear for your keyword search, it is a consideration you have to make because each of these features affects how traffic distributed in a search. Each feature requires different optimization to get your company to appear in them.

Optimize your website by creating content for users-not robots

The easiest way to optimize for a keyword, is to create content that completely satisfies the user’s motivation for performing the search. Whether it’s on the informational level or transactional level, creating content that satisfies user intent is a major ranking factor that will have a large impact on your websites ranking.

Google will also take into account the content on your site that supports the keyword you’re targeting. For example, if you’re targeting toothbrushes then it would only make sense that you would address the topic of toothpaste somewhere in your content.

Why does this matter?

When people search for toothbrushes they are likely to be interested in toothpaste. It’s a part of the bigger picture in the keyword topic. You can’t brush your teeth without either so they are both related content topics.

The chance is if you’re an expert on toothbrushes, you should have something to say about toothpaste as well. Google loves expert opinion because people are more likely to find the best information from an expert.

A user-centric approach to content creation will lead you in the right direction. When you think of your clients, and what they want and need to read about, you’re able to map out the most effective content for your site.

Of course, there are many aspects of on-page optimization that need to be accounted for in order to break any barriers of communication with the search engines. There are dozens of ranking signals you can send to enhance the optimization of your page and make it more competitive in the SERPs for a target keyword.

Connect and promote your pages

When you’ve published content the next phase of development is to connect and promote your page by linking to it from websites that improve your ranking. Just as Google has become more accurate in determining the context of your content, they are equally as good at determining the quality of your backlinks.

The simplest approach to acquiring good backlinks is to link from websites your potential clients would likely be on. That means that even if you’re not sure about link metrics and how search engines view it, create links that will allow you site to be found by people who would be interested in your services.

If you’re a local business, acquire links that tie your site into your location. Links are meant to improve your credibility and authority. Link from sites that will improve your website in both departments.

Avoid linking from low-quality sites may be considered “spammy” as those types of links will have an adverse effect on your site. That means limit the directory links you build and avoid article directories or any “easy to get” backlinks.

Generate more business in Cambridge with an optimized website

The truth is, it is becoming increasingly difficult to rank highly for the best search terms that will bring in the most money without optimizing your website. Google itself recommends hiring a Cambridge SEO expert in order to make sure your website is able to be found.

There are so many ranking factors to account for when competing for a difficult keyword. Invest in SEO in Cambridge to ensure your website is on the right track to appear in searches that lead to new clients.

50 Ways To Improve On-Page SEO [Infographic]

Almost everything we do on a daily basis is somehow integrated with a website, an app or Google search. For most companies, generating leads from Google is a major source for new clients. This article will show you how to improve on-page SEO on any website for any keywords in order to drive more traffic from Google search results.

The biggest ranking factors that dominate the search results are the content you publish and the quality of the backlinks that point to your website. Luckily for website owners, content is one of the things you have direct control over.

On-page optimization ensures your page targets the right keywords to attract the right type of traffic. You can enhance the ranking signals your site demonstrates for a specific keyword to maximize the potential your website has for generating leads.

The following infographic lists 50 different ways that your typical SEO company will improve your on-page SEO.

This infographic lists 50 different ways to improve on-page seo

Title optimization

Your title is the first thing that most people will look at in a search result. Include your keyword near the beginning of your title. Keep the length of your title at 60 characters to avoid it being cut off in the search results.

The title is the most important heading of your page and therefore should be wrapped in h1 tags. Most CMS software will automatically tag the title so you don’t need to worry about it if you’re using WordPress, Joomla, Wix or Squarespace.

Optimize your URL

The extension you give your page is an important descriptive detail for users and search engines. Use the postname option in your permalink settings and make sure your URL contains your keyword.

Users should get a sense of what your page is about by reading the URL. Limit the URL to five words to maximize the potency of your keyword description. Ideally, your URL should be kept under 90 characters to improve on-page SEO.

Use descriptive subtitles

Use your subtitles to segment your content into the most important parts of your page. Use h2, h3, h4 tags to signal to search engines the level of importance each heading represents.

When users scan through the page they should get an accurate summary of the content contained. What’s good for users is good for search engines.

Include your keyword and variations of your keyword at least once or more depending on the length of your article.

Publish keyword-rich content for users

Updates such as Hummingbird and BERT have allowed search engines to accurately extract the meaning from text. There is no substitute for descriptive, high-quality content. Despite this fact, it is still good practice to include your keyword in the first paragraph.

It would make sense that your target keyword would be repeated in a natural, conversational tone throughout your content. Your keyword should appear at least several times throughout the body of content.

Avoid over-optimizing your content by keyword stuffing. Any unnatural and forced use of a target keyword could trigger an adverse effect on the optimization of your page.

Content that satisfies search intent will rank highly. This means that when you target a specific keyword make sure you are covering the most obvious and most searched topics and subtopics that would satisfy the user’s query.

The goal is to make your website the last destination of a user’s search because you have adequately answered their query.

Images

Despite the giant leaps forward in a search engine’s ability to extract meaning, search engines still rely on your input to determine the meaning of an image.

Use keyword-rich descriptions in the image alt tags to give search engines the intended meaning your image represents and improve your on-page SEO.

Include your keyword in the filename.

Fill out captions and give your image an appropriate title to enhance optimization. This gives more information for search engines to properly categorize your image.

Outbound links

There is much evidence to support that linking out to authority sites improves the optimization of your page. Linking to a page that helps to enhance the user’s understanding of a particular topic adds credibility and signals relevance to your keyword topic.

Inbound links

The links that point to your page have a major influence on your optimization. Use descriptive anchor text to influence what keywords your page best represents for contextual links.

Guest posting is a popular method for optimizing the external anchor text links that point to your page.

Although keyword anchor text will enhance the optimization of your page, the overuse of keyword-optimized anchor text links will have an adverse effect on your ranking.

Webmasters should implement an internal linking strategy to achieve optimal on-page SEO. Use pillar page best practices for creating clustered content and an effective internal linking strategy.

Page speed

We are well into an era where page speed can mean the difference in making a sale-or even holding a user’s attention. Do you remember the last time you waited a minute for a page to load? Neither do I. No one waits for slow websites anymore.

If your page isn’t loading in under 3 seconds you are losing a percentage of the traffic that lands on your site.

If your site is super slow, then you’re facing a problem that is affecting your ranking because it contributes to poor user experience.

Keep your images compressed, reduce the number of HTML requests, inline JavaScript and CSS, use plugins and CDN’s to maintain an acceptable page load time.

Proper use of redirections

Whenever deleting or merging content it is advisable to use a 301 redirect to forward traffic from the old URL to the new. Avoid using 302 redirects as well as using redirect chains. Your redirections should take a user from one URL directly to the new page.

Broken links

When a user clicks a link and is taken to an error message it reduces their user experience. The accumulation of broken links will adversely affect rank. All links should take a user to a destination that enhances their user experience rather than undermines it.

Make site audits a regular routine to identify and repair broken links. Check both inbound and outbound links using software such as Ahrefs and Screaming Frog.

Use 301 redirects for the internal links that are broken. Replace all broken outbound links with new URLs to authority sites.

Accessible to search engines

Every page on your site should be accessed in less than 4 clicks from anywhere on the site. Your page should be able to be indexed by search engines, which can be impeded by the robots.txt file.

Site audits will identify what pages are indexed as well as those that are not indexable. You can also find this information on Google Search Console under the errors tab.

Incorporate schema

Use schema to make your page eligible for rich snippets. Using Schema better describes what your page is about to search engines and allows for a better understanding of the content.

Using JSON-LD is Google’s recommended script language and accounts for faster processing.

Responsive & made for mobile

Your pages should be made for mobile users-especially since the mobile version is now the first version that is indexed by Google.

Users should experience the same functionality on different screen sizes Your content should be easy to read and reformat its layout according to screen size.

Check your sites mobile score on Google’s Mobile Friendly Test and make any necessary changes listed in the report.

High-quality & shareable content

The term “high-quality” is a term we use a lot to describe how content should be written. The truth is that content should provide unique value and be compelling enough for users to want to share it with others.

We derive value from content that is entertaining, educational and informational. The use of images, video, audio and interactive media all contribute to a high-quality piece of content.

A high-quality web page is easily read by users at an 8th to 9th-grade reading level. The Fleischman scoring system scores content based on how difficult the page is to read.

In order for content to be shared easily, there should be social sharing icons that allow users to post to the appropriate social media platform.

Improve your on-page SEO

There’s no doubt that on-page SEO is necessary to rank your website on the first page of Google. As search engines continue to expand their capabilities, every aspect of optimizing your web page becomes less negotiable in order to maintain high rankings.

Incorporate each element of on-page optimization in your content creation. Create highly competitive, targeted pages that are built to last on the first page of search results.

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12 Web Design Trends For 2020 By Toronto Experts

Staying ahead of the curve in the latest web design trends for 2020 can give your company the competitive edge that makes you stand out from the crowd. As we venture further into a technological frontier, new trends are being set and it’s imperative to incorporate new features and functions that enhance the user experience of potential clients.

After reaching out to 18 web design companies, we came up with a list of 12 trends that every Toronto Web Design Company can agree will continue to take the spotlight in 2020.

12 web design trends For 2020

  1. Minimalist Design
  2. Large Typography
  3. Video Solutions
  4. Page Speed
  5. Made for Mobile
  6. 3D Graphic Animations
  7. Single Menu Interface
  8. Illustrative Design
  9. Messaging
  10. Long Homepages
  11. Web Accessibility
  12. Voice Search
Infographic on 12 web design trends For 2020 that Toronto web design experts predict will be prevalent throughout the year

Share this Image On Your Site

Minimalist Design

Companies have gravitated towards a minimalist design for years because of its effectiveness in communicating whatever the main message may be on a site. Minimalist sites are essentially stripped of any flash or overly busy design.

This images shows minimalist design (one of the design trends for 2020) Matt and Nat homepage is the example

Dominic Brault from 360 Nerds says “As a business owner who started in the early days of the Internet, I’ve seen design trends come and go… But one trend seems to remain strong from the end of the last decade and its minimalism. No one wants a website with a ton of flash anymore. Strong, simple with easily accessible call-to-actions. Simplicity is key for customers to convert on your site! Keep that in mind!”

Ted and huge collaborate-10 best design showcases the homepage as an example of minimalism design
Image source: 10 Best Design

Elvin Cheung from WittyCookie, explains, “Minimalism has been a popular design choice for mobile for a few years now. Still, it’s a reliable and long-lasting trend that has more than proved its worth and looks set to stay strong through 2020. 

The point we want to emphasize here, though, is that minimalist design doesn’t have to mean boring design. You can still use bold, bright colours, overlapping sections, and heavy fonts – whatever suits your branding. 

Minimalism is about cutting away any unnecessary excess to create a clear and easy user experience. Make use of white space, and focus on form and function to avoid overwhelming your visitors.”

WittyCookie produced this site which is being used as an example of minimal design for mobile
Image source: https://www.wittycookie.ca/portfolio/mizu-towel/

Large Typography

Matt Balshin, CEO from MB Creative, also shares a similar opinion on minimalist websites but elaborates on how they work hand in hand with large typography.

An example of large typography, another one of the web design trends for 2020
Image source: 99 Designs

Matt adds “Minimalist websites with very large typography…has been a rising trend over the past few years and is without a doubt here to stay. More websites are being designed every day with the principal of minimal, modern design at the forefront. 

Large typography from Huge Inc. as an example
Image source: Huge Inc.

The result of a well designed minimal website is a clean, modern website that provides a fantastic user experience.

The evolution of minimal design has come to incorporate large typography to enhance the character of the brand behind the message. 

Talkd.co as an example of combining web design trends for 2020
Image source: talkd.co

In 2020 we are going to see a progression of this minimal web design trend where a lot of websites will combine minimal design with maxi typography to make a stronger statement. 

MB creative example of a client site in which they used large typography
Image source: https://mbcreative.ca/work.php

Web designers everywhere are attempting to create minimal designs by removing unnecessary details, decorations and overall clutter, but unlike in years past they are using larger than life typography to make bold statements that can’t be missed.”

Page speed

The time it takes a web page to load has undoubtedly been a priority since Google declared it a ranking factor in 2010 for desktop. In 2018, page speed became a ranking factor for mobile versions of websites and will remain a motivating consideration in web design trends for 2020.

Paul Bies, a partner at Mystique Brand Communications comments, “An important design trend that will continue in 2020 is the focus on website speed and performance to enhance the visitor experience.

While download speed continues to improve, it seems that visitor patience continues to wear thin for sites that take too long to download.

While this trend may be more of design philosophy, it is the driving principle behind other trends such as minimalist design, growing white space, and long scrolling pages.

Just the same, you’ll notice designers eliminating or at least minimizing speed sucking elements in an effort to make their sites download faster.

The reward from visitors for providing a better user experience will be higher engagement levels. And the reward from Google will be higher rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Nothing short of a win-win.”

Baljot Saral from Web Sharx backs Paul up by saying, “What I think is vital to creating and developing an effective website, is being able to build it to achieve the quickest on-load and full-page speed times.

We live in a fast-paced and demanding environment, and being able to bridge the balance between excellent design and seamless coding to have a fast-loading website is extremely important.”

Made For Mobile

Google has been urging website owners to create more mobile-friendly sites from before Mobilegedddon in 2015. 

Hassam Hessami MQ Solutions says, “Go mobile or Go home! The mobile website is becoming more important than a desktop version. 51.3% of all internet usage originates from mobile devices, and this number will grow even more in the following years.

I think one of the most important aspects of 2020 is addressing the mobile usage of the website. A responsive website with unobtrusive popups is a crucial critical factor here.

Besides, all of the conventional website optimization best practices that apply to a desktop version of a website, also apply to the mobile version.”

Kirsten Hutchinson from Total Internet Marketing adds, “The top trend we see going into 2020 is the continued mobile-centric design, not just responsive but mainly built for mobile-first from layout to individual page design. 

Data is supporting that most websites have more mobile visitors now than desktop so it’s building the design and individuals for that view first, then desktop.”

Video Solutions

Over the last few years, YouTube has posted some incredible stats about the sudden growth of video.

Whether it can be attributed to the widespread increase in bandwidth and faster internet speeds, video is being shared and watched more often and playing a much bigger role in how people are learning about brands and making purchase decisions. 

Adam Evans from Thought Media states, “One of the top digital trends for 2020 will be increased integration of video streaming and video headers for high converting landing pages.

Over 85% of total online traffic will be in video streaming. Web design agencies interested in capitalizing on this should consider producing more video content for marketing purposes, and for clients.”

When asked what he thought to be a major trend for 2020, Jermey Goldenberg, President of Pearl White Media confirmed “video headers using the latest and best WordPress themes/frameworks and plugins.”

3D Graphic Animations

Cassidy Krueger from Geek Power states “Our team believes that interactivity is the biggest web design “trend” (Probably just a rule at this point).

Even with boundary-pushing designs, one of the elements that remain pertinent is a visual feature to entice your visitor. Whether that is video background, parallax scrolling, or SVG animations, they play a big role in your website’s attractiveness.

Plink's homepage demonstrating 3d graphic animation (another one of the web design trends for 2020)
Image source: https://useplink.com/en/

If you were to define a trend WITHIN that topic, I would choose 3D graphics. Those smooth, incredibly well-rendered videos that often get called “Oddly Satisfying” is a great example of this style of animation.”

An example of a 3D image on a client site from Geek power. 3D graphic animation is one of the web design trends for 2020
Image source: https://www.in-toronto-web-design.ca/

Guillermo Figueredo, founder of Awesome Web Design shares a similar opinion and states, “Creative trends and techniques are increasingly demanding in web design, so it requires constant study and analysis to always stay updated. If I have to highlight one trend for 2020, I would make a remark about dynamic elements, such as animations, illustrations, gifs or flexible effects. 

They have arrived in the web design industry to stay (at least for a while). These types of designs achieve very visual and creative results as long as they are combined correctly. If you decide to use this type of graphic resources, my advice is to make sure the illustrations are original and fully customized.” 

Single Menu Interface

It’s not new to mobile devices, but for desktop, there are more textless navigation bars trending. Ian Chapman from Leaf Design Inc. explains:

“A trend that is being driven by client input is the use of a single menu interface for both desktop and mobile designs.

An example of a single menu interface, one of the web design trends for 2020 as predicted by Leaf Design Inc
Image source: https://www.leafdesign.ca/our-work/

With the “hamburger” icon being well understood to represent the menu on mobile devices, more frequently, it is replacing the traditional text-based navigation bars, even on corporate sites.

We are seeing many of our clients pushing for more unique and engaging menu designs that add an interactive quality to their site. However, this is a boundary that one must be careful to not overdo, as usability should always dump design.”

Illustrative Design

The use of illustrations in web design is contributing to more brand recognition and will continue to trend as an effective method of storytelling and defining a company’s brand. 

Tim Husband, co-founder of Blue Flamingo Solutions Inc. gives his take on the trend of illustrative design:

“Images and videos are commonplace in many web designs and advertisements. But for web design specifically, we’ll see a trend in 2020 of designers moving towards illustration and animation to tell a full story. 

Example of Illustrative design on a client site from Bluflamingo as one of the web design trends for 2020
Image source: https://www.blueflamingo.ca/portfolio/reed-business-information/

Utilizing recognizable illustrations in web design means improving the brand’s image and helping it to be memorable with every click. The visual expression can go a step further with recognizable and memorable fonts.”

Alexander Plagiannakos from Thinkbound Inc. takes this concept a step further by stating, “We find an important trend this year is keeping users engaged with smooth page transitions and scrolling controlled animations.

Custom designed illustrations that match logo branding that helps tell a story, that a user can interact with during their experience makes their stay on pages longer and is a useful addition for reducing visitor bounce rates.”

Messaging

As much as the visual aspect of a website plays a significant part in capturing the attention of its audience, the message conveyed is ultimately the most important aspect of design. 

Robert Cairns, CEO of Stunning Digital Marketing reflects, “One of the biggest things that we see wrong with Web Design is too many people spend way too much time and budget on the design side of a web site project. My agency truly believes that the messaging on websites is just as important if not even more important than the design.  

This means that more of the budget on a website project needs to be spent and time focused on the copy and messaging on the website.

Remember if your messaging is wrong you will not draw the right kind of clients. The messaging needs to be written from the point of view on why the potential client/website viewer needs your product/service.”

Long homepages

Jassmin Nicoloff from A.K.A. New Media says, “The purpose of most brand websites is to establish an online platform to attract, convert and deepen the relationship with its target audience. This should be done by developing an information architecture and navigational system that weaves all communication channels organizes the content and helps connect users with the information they seek while exposing them to the breadth of what the organization has to offer. 

It’s important to inspire and educate a user as quickly as possible; many users don’t go beyond the homepage of a website, so a long homepage is a notable feature that gives organizations room to share a wide organizational overview and the opportunity to take advantage of authentic storytelling.

The Jack.org website, which was designed by A.K.A. New Media and integrates with AKA raisin’s donation platform, is a prime example of effective user design and navigation.

In addition to the beautiful modern design, it creates a linear path for visitors by explaining, educating and engaging. The long homepage both informs and inspires the user; for those who want to dive deeper into the content, the information is provided in a guided fashion.”

Web Accessibility

Richard Gauder from CMS Web Solutions reports, “The biggest design trend for 2020, in Ontario specifically, is web accessibility. 

With the next level of the AODA law kicking in Jan 2021 (for organizations with more than 50 employees) building to WCAG 2.0 AA standards is now a must. But any graphic designer, web designer or web developer now needs to know how to build to WCAG standards. 

Why be responsible for excluding any visitor to a website? Or worse yet, being responsible for building something that will soon open up your client to fines.”

Voice search

Erez Elias, CEO and founder of All The Way Up Media believes that “Voice search is taking over not only the search functionality but also it will impact the design.

Local businesses will be impacted by this the most and they’ll have to start thinking in a way of how and what to include on the website and structure it in a way that it will appear on search engines and especially on Google Maps.

So, yes, this is not directly impacting the design (colour, font, ext) but it will impact a designers’ perspective when they’re working on a new website.”

Web Design Trends for 2020

Unlike effective SEO services in Toronto, design trends come and go, however, one trend that has not changed is the constant improvement of user experience. Every change in style and design that becomes popular, is accompanied with more thought and effort to create more enjoyable, practical features for everyday use.

There’s no doubt you will recognize many of the web design trends for 2020 as indicated by Toronto experts. Whether it’s a local business or a big-name brand, you should see a significant number of websites demonstrating a number of these trends throughout the year.

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