The Psychology of Colour Selection on SEO

You may think that choosing a colour to use on your website's clickable links may not warrant your attention, but colour selection and colour psychology can produce a surprisingly significant impact on your site's SEO. Colours can subconsciously elicit particular attitudes and emotions within us that may ultimately shape our behaviour.

When we see a certain colour, say red for example, we automatically form associations between colours and emotions they elicit from us, spanning memories, impactful experiences and perspectives that we unconsciously imbue with meaning. While you may not remember where you were or what you were doing – you might remember how happy, afraid or angry you might have felt. Associations between things and their meanings, in this case, form a semiotic bond – dictating where we assign meaning in the world around us.

Colour and SEO-Friendly Web Design

Aside from cultural association and symbolic meaning, colour selection is also a major component of search engine-friendly web design. Designing for SEO not only concerns how you rank in web searches, but also how this ranking is generated as a function of being a high quality, valuable site for users with relevant search queries. It all boils down to providing the best foundation for users to navigate your site – and colour psychology has a lot to do with it.

Ideally, this should not be a question for visitors to your site. When links are indistinguishable from other elements on a web page, users find it more difficult and time-consuming to complete a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter or find other means of engagement. Users' click uncertainty may lead them to giving up before the task is complete. Wherever there is a link on your site, ensuring that there isn't any confusion regarding how recognisable it is should be non-negotiable.

Call-to-Action Colours and Conversions

In an age no longer bound by a handful of web-safe colours, there is a reason that sites still use bright reds and yellows for their CTAs: it simply works. These bold colours – or colours with greater saturation – capture more attention and provide a sense of urgency than those that may be considered more aesthetically-pleasing. So if your goal is to convert, then ditching an all-pastel aesthetic for a standout button could be worthwhile.

Readability and Legibility

Legibility is a vital component of the SEO process as users are more likely to engage with your site if they can easily read it. A study also found a positive correlation between readability and professionalism. Merely implementing contrasting colours for your site is not enough to optimise its visual appeal: the way elements are layered also plays a role.

The Takeaway

Though the colours you choose for your website might not affect SEO directly, it is still important to consider how colour selection impacts the ways users interact with your site – and as a result, how this behaviour is interpreted by search engines as an endorsement of your site value. Simply put, search engine algorithms do not have an innate preference for one colour over another, but they do have an undeniable effect on good user experiences.

Testing potential colour schemes for your site and monitoring traffic through Google Analytics can offer insight into the best colours for your business.