So, you’ve decided to design your own website. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a growing trend as so many businesses are turning to affordable custom-designed websites. You’ll want a site with all the latest bells and whistles, but be sure you’re not overlooking some really important details – which can often hurt SEO.
Here, we look at some of the crucial mistakes you can make when creating your website that can hurt your online visibility.
Why do you need a website?
A website is the face of an organisation on the internet. A good business website has a clear purpose, is easy to navigate and has useful content that encourages visitors to return again and again. Businesses are relying more and more on their own websites – to make sales, manage customer relationships, and get found by potential customers when they’re searching online for products and services. In fact, research has shown that 56% of online consumers will not trust a business that does not have a website. So, if your business is yet to have a website, you are possibly missing out on a huge potential market. Support your digital marketing agency, SEO company, or consultancy with our white label SEO programs. Get the manpower you need without adding new in-house employees and provide clients with on-going link building, blog outreach, local citation building services, on-page SEO, technical website optimization and made for you SEO reports – https://redesign.co/.
SEO mistakes to avoid when designing your website
Having a website that engages visitors and communicates your business message clearly and effectively is key to your success. However, website owners and website designers should understand the basics of search engine optimisation (SEO), as this can lead to increased traffic and more sales. Everything from choosing a domain name to hosting or coding can impact your SEO.
Here are the top 7 mistakes that will hurt your SEO and prevent you from getting found on search engines.
Slow website speed
Slow website speed is the single most important issue a business owner can address for their online presence. It is not just an issue of convenience, but it also affects your business’s reputation and credibility. Google states that websites with faster response times have higher search rankings for certain queries.
For a busy business, website speed is increasingly important. Only 53% of visitors will wait more than 3 seconds for a web page to load. With Google now factoring in website speed in its search ranking algorithm, it’s important to consider how you can improve your server performance today.
Poor website navigation
With SEO being the primary goal for most websites, poor website navigation will hurt your rankings. Poor navigation is when a visitor takes too long to find what they’re looking for, or worse, ends up on a random page without finding what they’re looking for.
Poor navigation can considerably affect a website’s conversion rates because visitors may become bored or frustrated and leave the site. To prevent this, website designers should learn about creating good website navigation, and follow appropriate steps.
If this is above your level of skill, then a better alternative is to look into expert SEO services just like freeparking.co.nz/other-products/seo-services who can look into your website to make the necessary adjustments.
Non-mobile friendly website
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, Google will not show it to users using smartphones in their search results. This is because mobile is the #1 way that people use to access information on the web. And if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, your business could miss out on potential customers.
The truth is that a non-mobile-friendly website could experience an average decrease of 30% in traffic from search engines, and with more 57% of the world’s internet traffic already mobile since 2018, it’s no longer a nice-to-have but is a fundamental need for modern businesses.
Poor website hosting
Web hosting is an important part of your website and search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, but many companies don’t take it seriously. Poor hosting will cause your site to load slowly, which not only hurts your SEO, but can also hurt the user experience and the bottom line.
There are millions of websites competing for search engine visibility. If you don’t have a faster website hosting, you will die in your quest to make your website stick out among millions of others. Having control over your hosting plan is important to achieve high search engine rankings and grow your audience.
Poor content
Search engines are looking for web pages that contain, accurate, credible, valuable and relevant information. They want to find out what you can contribute to the world wide web. When you share poor quality content on your site, is can hurt your SEO. Bad content will get your site banned from search engines. In order to rank well on Google, you need to optimize your content. If search engines consider your content to be spammy or low quality, they’ll penalize you and remove you from the results. This is important in the three areas: Keyword usage, Content freshness, and Quality of links.
Don’t make it hard for search engines to find your content. Site owners should use best practices when writing website content.
Disruptive pop-ups
Perhaps the most common mistake companies make – and an easy one to overlook – is using disruptive pop-ups on their website. A Neilson study indicated that nearly 95% of all users have closed a webpage because of unwanted ads or pop-ups.
Pop-ups are a huge turnoff and can hurt your SEO. You lose the chance to be listed in search engines, users will leave your site without converting and you’ll lose traffic. Create an email list instead to build trust with your customers, rank higher in the major search engines and grab attention. Pop-up free design is something that every good business should have so be sure to keep this in mind when designing your next website.
No call to actions
If you have a beautifully designed website with stunning elements but no call to actions, then there is no need using it. Call to action should be placed strategically on your website for improving the user experience and increasing the conversion rate. Through smart and strategic placement of call to actions, you can achieve your goal as well as improving your website performance in terms of SEO.
Wrapping up
Optimizing your website for search engine optimization requires careful consideration of the content and design of its pages. Hopefully, this article has been able to outline some common SEO mistakes to avoid when designing a new website or redesigning an existing one.
