What Is a Favicon and How Do I Create One?
Favicons are the little icon/logo found next to anything that identifies your website, for example, bookmarks, tabs, history results, and search bars. For example, Pagio Website Builder has the 3D P and Apple has their apple logo. Its main purpose is to help visitors locate your page easily when they have multiple tabs open.
Are Favicons important for SEO?
Favicons do not directly affect your SEO however they can indirectly have an impact on it. As favicons are important for building brand trust, websites without them can look disreputable and cause visitors to either not click on them at all or click off immediately. Vice versa, a website with an eye-catching and well-designed favicon can help improve click-through rates.
What makes a good Favicon?
Though small a good favicon should make a big impact. It should represent your brand and allow visitors to identify your website immediately. Below are a few things to take into consideration when designing your favicon.
Simplicity: Though the favicon is the visual face of your brand, you want to keep your design as simple as possible due to the small size. Trying to cram too much into the tiny space can make your favicon look cluttered and confusing. You may opt for abbreviating your logo or using an image from your logo instead.
Brand Identity: Your colour palette should represent your brand but also be easy for your visitors to understand. If you’re using multiple colours avoid those that clash or have low contrast as they can be difficult to view in such a small size. Keep in mind that the background colour of browsers varies.
How do I make a Favicon?
Now that we’ve established what a favicon is, why it’s important and what makes a good one, let’s talk about how to create one.
If you don’t have the design skills it is worth investing in a professional who can create a favicon based on your company’s logo or branding. You can then convert this into a favicon using a free site like favicon.io
You can also use favicon.io to create a basic font or emoji favicon completely from scratch if you don’t already have an image that you want to use.
What format should my Favicon be?
Favicons are usually PNGs. PNG format is useful for several different reasons. You do not need any special tools to create a PNG file, making it very user-friendly and supports alpha transparency.
Final thoughts
A favicon may seem small and unimportant, but it is a great step in ensuring your website doesn’t lose customers by appearing disreputable and has clear branding. Often these small things that don’t seem significant are what ensure your website stands out. We often see the WordPress logo as favicons as the website owner cannot easily update it themselves, on the Pagio Website Builder platform, we allow our users to easily upload and manage their favicon.
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