Common Web Design Mistakes That Hurt SEO
The digital revolution has taken the business world by storm. Online visibility has become the lifeline of marketing in the current times when smartphones have become omnipresent. With more and more companies taking the route of the internet to reach out to their target audience, an immersive web presence has been gaining prominence. Naturally, SEO in Gold Coast is in high demand. However, many marketers are still not aware of the right tactics for tapping into its potential.
They still make many mistakes that hamper their rankings and consequently the traffic. One such mistake is errors in the web design that hurt SEO. These can prove harmful to user experience and bring down the popularity of the website. So, here is a list of the common design issues that should be avoided to get ahead of the competition in the cluttered digital market space.
1. Optimisation for Mobile Phones
The first thing that customers use for finding products and services is their mobile phone. It is estimated that 55% of the population is using their smartphones to shop online. Thus, the browsing experience of the shoppers on their devices must be seamless and comfortable. Mobile responsiveness is the need of the hour as most of the offline purchasing is a result of an online search. A mobile-friendly website is able to generate more traffic as Google offers a higher ranking to websites that portray the quality. Thus, the web design should be ready for m-commerce with a payment gateway and shopping cart. You can check the responsiveness of the site by analysing it on the Mobile-Friendly Test.
2. Confusing Navigation
You may have an attractive colour scheme and layout with valuable content. However, if the navigation is puzzling and complex, it can make the user irritated. They may not be able to find the product or information they need, and it will increase the bounce rate of the site. For better ranking, visitors must spend more time on the website and explore its landing pages. An intuitive web design also helps the web crawlers to identify different pages and understand the structure of the site. Thus, you must focus on internal linking to allow the users to find all the relevant pages with ease.
3. Absence of H1 Tags
It is the most vital part of the page design that allows the search engines to identify the topic of the content on the page. With H1 tags, the crawlers cannot understand the subject matter. Also, it gives the viewers a better insight into the page and helps in dividing the information into sections and subsections for ease of comprehension. The H1 tag should provide a brief introduction and the following H1s should organise the content in a legible manner. Every page can have multiple H1s, and they need not have relevant keywords. These are merely needed for ease of readability.
4. Slow Page Loading
When the page takes ages to load, there are chances that your visitor will move to some other site. In the fast-paced digital world, no one has time to wait for more than 3 seconds for a page to load. With so many options and websites available, users do not have the patience to wait. Thus, marketers need to catch their attention as soon as possible to satisfy the users and make them come back. Also, Google uses page load time to determine rankings that is why it cannot be ignored.
5. Putting Information in Images
The worst mistake that a web designer could make is putting valuable content on the page in the form of an image. Although images help in improving the appeal of the site and captivating the audience, search engines do not crawl them. The search engine programs have the competence of reading the HTML code and looking for content. They do not pay attention to images when categorising web pages. Thus, make sure that the HTML code should not be stuffed with unnecessary images and animations. Otherwise, it will not get ranked as it will not get recognised by the spiders.
6. Content Style and Whitespaces
The look and feel of the web page depending on the presentation and placement of the content. Thus, the designer should pay attention to the font, colour, and size of the text. It should be clearly visible and flow in a systematic manner on the page with required headings and images. The use of whitespace between the elements is incredibly useful in creating a palatable site that does not confuse the reader. The CSS code needs to be altered to include appropriate line height, margins, spacing, etc. It aids in getting a higher rank on the search engine results page.
7. Annoying Pop-Ups
Pop-ups that jump out of nowhere as soon as you land on the site can be extremely irritating. If the user is not happy with the way they turn up and disrupt their browsing, they will leave your site and may not return. Consequently, Google will not rank it higher because of this problem. Thus, use pop-ups intelligently as they can help in conversions. Make sure that they are not intrusive and do not vex the visitors. So, they must only appear after the user has spent some time on the site and is ready to listen to some amazing news about offers and discounts that can be displayed in the pop-up.
8. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is not acceptable as it involves blatantly copying the content from another website. Search engines are smart enough to identify duplicate content and will not rank the site with the copied text. Paraphrasing without putting much thought into customising the content or stuffing keywords does not help either. Google offers a higher ranking to sites that have unique and original information which is valuable to the readers. Also, if the same article is used by two sites, the search engine can determine which business published it first and ranks it higher. So, make sure that you do not copy the content from others.
Conclusion
If you wish to improve the position of your business website on the search engine results page, you need to make sure that your web design is appropriate. Take help from SEO experts in Gold Coast to find these anomalies in your site and bring it on top.
