When SEO Gets in the Way of Stylish Web Design

Today's SEO-oriented web design culture places importance on making sure that every detail and stylistic choice fulfills multiple vaguely defined criteria representing the interests of different factions. Because the likelihood that a website will receive a strong and sustainable level of incoming traffic is tied so closely to its SERP positions, said site must strive to both satisfy Google's algorithms and increase the likelihood that the average user will stay interested. While there are many aspects of a website's technical structure that a designer can be reasonably assured will help its SERP rankings once changed, what might ultimately lead to better customer retention and engagement is more subjective.

Web designers often have to rely on a mixture of instinct and faith when deciding whether to use a certain combination of background colors and foreground text styling because there is no strictly defined standard of what audiences might find stylistically appealing. There are certain fonts that are obviously less-than-ideal choices because of how widely they are vilified, such as the notorious Comic Sans font. Fonts like those aside, it is generally preferable to use a Sans Serif font because the additional lines sported by Serif-based fonts are often seen as making the text more "cluttered" than necessary.

Web designers generally can safely assume that using a Sans Serif font broadly accepted to be "easy to read" will satisfy the overwhelming majority of potential audiences because very few among them would realistically still care about the exact font used. Nevertheless, there are countless Sans Serif fonts available that can impart vague and nuanced feelings of their own, which may or may not clash with the branding of the website in question. For example, the average reader will get jarred if they are reading content about vehicle repairs but the text's font would seem to better fit a website about confectionery. It is up to the designer to personally evaluate how well the font mixes with the site's branding and overall aesthetic to minimize the proportion of the audience that would get turned away by what might be perceived as "patchwork" web design. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/webdesign/comments/p4qgmn/whichofthesetwofontswouldyouusefora/.