Logo Design Best Practices for SEO-Friendly Websites in 2024

What makes a great logo design? One that uses a fancy font? One with an abstract shape that is reminiscent of modern art? Or maybe one that features an intricate illustration?

Your answer might vary. But in today’s digital world, a logo should go beyond a cool and stylish one. It needs to be optimized, looks-wise and technical-wise, to fit various search engine standards. A proper logo SEO strategy can lead to your website appearing higher on search results and help you build a stronger online presence.

So how do you make a logo that looks good not only to the human eye but also to Google’s eye? Let’s take a look at the different tips and techniques you can use to create a logo that is optimized for SEO.

Best Practices for SEO-Friendly Logos

An SEO-friendly website has intuitive navigation, fast loading speed, seamless and clean layout, proper domain name, visually appealing branding, and keyword optimization.

All of these hallmarks can be applied to your logo design as well. Consider the following tips:

Keep the design simple

As the famous design principle states, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” It means that complex designs should be avoided as much as possible since people understand and accept simpler designs more.

And while this advice is mainly geared toward product design or software development, it holds true for your logos as well. This is because simpler logos are easier to remember and recognize. It’s the way you can draw Nike’s or Apple’s logo from memory, but you’ll probably struggle to recreate the intricate logo of Versace.

The chances of people interacting with your website are also higher if they can identify your logo immediately. It’s because they’ll feel more comfortable and safe since they know it's from your brand and not just any random website.

All of these lead to a better user experience, which we all know Google prioritizes more than anything.

How do you create simple logos?

• Use 2-3 colors at most
• Use a clean and legible font
• Stick to simpler shapes and illustrations

Compress your logo

Slow-loading sites are the bane of every user. Fifty-three percent of people even say that they’ll abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Since Google is committed to catering to user's preferences, your website ranking will take a huge hit if it has a slow loading time.

One way to make your website load faster is to have small image file sizes. This can be done by compressing your images. Tools like TinyPNG, Compress JPEG, or Optimole can be used to shrink your file without making it pixelated or blurry.

Remember our advice earlier about making simple logos? It has a positive effect here as well. Simpler logos usually mean smaller file sizes due to using less data for their elements, colors, or shapes. It’s also easier to retain their quality when compressing since they have minimal details.

Optimize for mobile 

Fifty-five percent of web traffic worldwide comes from mobile. Google also mainly refers to your mobile site when deciding their rankings. If your image files (especially your logo) on mobile look distorted and unreadable, it’s going to severely tank your ranking.

How do you ensure that your logo is mobile-friendly?

• Ensure that your logo is responsive and can automatically adapt to different screen sizes
• Simple and legible enough that the details will still come through even on a smaller screen
• Have a long or intricate logo? Create a simplified mobile variation if necessary. For example, Chanel uses their simpler interlocking Cs as their favicon or Instagram profile picture due to the smaller space. But they use their complete logo on bigger spaces like their website header and billboards.

Align with your branding

Your logo is the visual representation of your branding. It’s your one image that summarizes your values, messaging, and identity.

A great logo design uses your color scheme, typography, and art style. See how you recognize that specific shade of green as Spotify’s? Or that cursive font as Disney’s? That’s branding at work.

Make sure the mood of your logo also depicts your identity. For example, a bank like J.P. Morgan uses a minimalist professional logo. While Nickelodeon, a TV channel geared towards kids, uses a playful and vibrant logo.

Strong branding can also influence your SEO performance. Branded searches (such as typing “Fenty lipstick” instead of just “lipstick”) can signal to Google that your brand is credible and relevant. People are also more likely to click on your website if they recognize your logo. This leads to increasing your website authority, and later on, your website ranking.

Pay attention to color

Your logo color plays a huge role in two things – visual impact and accessibility.

Visual impact can be done through a tasteful color palette. This can be through harmonious combinations of light pastel tones or with a monochromatic gradient. Or by pairing psychedelic colors for a vibrant color blocking.

Color can also be used to reinforce your brand identity. Red is seen as passionate and bold, while blue is seen as peaceful and calm. And so on.

How about accessibility? This is seen through the contrast of your colors with each other and with the background. If your logo blends with the background, it’s hard to see. The same goes if the colors are too harsh with each other – such as pairing a bright red logo with a neon orange background.

All of these affect your users, especially those with visual impairments. Make sure to have a healthy contrast between your logo and your background to make your design more accessible to your users.

Be mindful of your file name

Search engines also crawl your file name and not just your image itself.

Giving your logo a proper file name such as “brandname-logo.jpg” instead of just “image34.jpg” or “logofinalfinal.jpg” can help these crawlers understand your image better. This helps in boosting your SEO.

Write alt-text

Alt-text shows a description of an image if for some reason the image did not load. This not only helps those with visual impairments (since their screen readers read the alt-text) but also search engine crawlers.

Just like with your file names, adding the proper alt-text to your images and logos is also needed. Try to incorporate 1-2 keywords as well to maximize it for SEO. Just be sure not to overstuff it, since you are mainly doing this to make your site accessible to your users.

Place the logo in the right spot

Here’s a quick exercise: go to different websites now and look for their logo.

You’ll notice that most of them have it in the top left corner. This is because this has been a site convention – your logo is in that spot and clicking it will return you to the homepage.

Since this is what every site does, users expect all logos to be in the same spot. If you don’t follow this “rule,” you’ll risk adding confusion to your users, which leads to a bad user experience.

Make sure your logo is placed there and has an ample amount of space between other elements so that your users can click it properly without any errors.

Final Thoughts

A great logo should not only look good but should also help improve your SEO performance.

The key is to apply SEO guidelines to your logo as well. Need a fast-loading site? Then your logo file needs to load fast as well. Need to infuse your written content like blogs with keywords? Add them to your file names and alt-text as well. And so on.

By following the above tips, you too can have a logo that not only represents your brand more effectively but also boost your SEO strategy.