How to prevent 6 common website design mistakes that hurt search engine optimization

Imagine entering an internet site having a nice background picture, a properly considered font, as well as an elaborate color plan. It appears amazing. Going through seems like a stroll inside a beautiful garden.

Bad nobody will discover it searching engines.

Why? Because very frequently website designers and developers ignore essential Search engine optimization elements.

The most typical offense is removing an H1 tag simply because there’s room for this around the page.

The H1 tag is among the first elements internet search engine crawlers will appear at to determine which the page is all about. Getting this tag, and as well as your target keyword, improves your odds of ranking greater.

Here’s an internet site which has a obvious H1 tag in the forefront:

Sample website with H1 tag

This H1 tag helps Sock Fancy rank within the top three organic positions for a lot of keywords associated with “monthly socks”.

Sock Fancy ranking organically in the top three positions for many keywords related to “monthly socks”.

If you want to describe to designers and website proprietors the way the website may benefit from your H1 tag, introduce these to a 5-second test. Based on this test, if your user can certainly tell exactly what the web site is about for only searching in internet marketing for five seconds, its consumer experience is nice.

Usually, the simplest way to describe the objective of the web site is to apply a descriptive H1 tag at the top.

Mistake 2: Large Images & Media Files

Beautiful imagery makes your site look amazing. But you have to be careful with how big your media files.

Including large images and videos can negatively impact your website speed, which may lead to lower rankings.

Google rewards pages that load rapidly.

How can you tell for those who have large content in your website and how will you repair it?

For any quick scan, you should use Google PageSpeed Insights Test that will explain precisely what images Google thinks are extremely large around the page.

Google PageSpeed Insights Test

This test implies that the page could be further enhanced by reduction of how big the pictures by 70 %.

You may also use Screaming Frog instead of identify large images and media files across your site.

When you’ve identified individuals images, re-size and/or compress them and re-upload aimed at your website.

Mistake 3: Popups

Lately Google cautioned websites to prevent using intrusive interstitials and pop-ups.

Consumer experience, especially on cellular devices, is very vital that you Google. When creative or elaborate popups appear before these potential customers have access to primary content, it may negatively impact UX and, therefore, your Search engine optimization.

Popups for SEO

This can be a great time to reflect on your pop-up strategy, particularly if you’re visiting a loss of organic traffic.

Mistake 4: Text in Images

Surprisingly, this error is prevalent. Rather of together with a text layer over a picture, many website designers just include text into a picture.

Why do so bad?

To begin with, search engines like google can’t “see” the look like people can. Therefore, search engines like google can’t “read” the written text around the image. Basically, it’s the same not to such as the text whatsoever.

Within the example below, the whole banner at the top is a image. For that reason, the web site is missing an H1 tag, a subheadline, and primary benefits that may be useful in ranking greater for his or her target keywords.

Text in Images

One more reason this design tactic is faulty happens because it isn’t responsive. The like a mobile phone, the written text and also the button are likely to appear really small, causing poor consumer experience.

Sample of small text and button on mobile device

Mistake 5: Infinite Scroll

This popular website design technique can definitely hurt your Search engine optimization performance when done incorrectly.

Infinite scroll loads more content because the user will get to the foot of the page. In case your pagination isn’t setup properly, search engines like google won’t have the ability to crawling your website.

Let’s if you have infinite scrolling enabled in your blog which has 100 pages. Should you only show 10 newest posts automatically, that’s what internet search engine robots might find. Since robots crawl websites via links there’s not a way to allow them to know there’s more content around the page past the top ten articles.

The good thing is that you could make infinite scroll pages search-friendly. Do as instructed Google Website owner Blog provides and also you won’t need to compromise between design and Search engine optimization.

Mistake 6: Thin Content

Service and product pages are the most crucial pages in your website.

The greater rankings you will get on their behalf for the target keywords, the greater business you’ll have. It’s that easy.

A few of the common errors associated with thin content:

  • Not getting service/product pages online. Through the elimination of individuals pages out of your website altogether, you take advantage of yourself of the chance to position organically for the target keywords.

Not including any service pages can hurt your SEO rankings.

  • Getting one page listing multiple services or products. The very best Search engine optimization practice would be to get one idea/keyword per page. This way it’s obvious to look engines what each page is all about plus they can rank it accordingly. Once you begin including multiple services or products on a single page, it might be confusing as well as your website can lose rankings.

One page multiple services

  • Getting little text in your service/product pages. When you’ve identified which service/product pages to incorporate in your website, spend time taking into consideration the copy you’ll include on every page. For those who have descriptive content that explains for your visitors what the advantages of dealing with you or purchasing from you’re, there’s a larger chance these pages will rank greater. There’s additionally a greater chance that visitors will become customers. It’s victory-win!

thin content

Summary

Regardless of whether you’re focusing on a brand new website or redesigning a current website, don’t ignore these critical Search engine optimization elements. In the end, what good is really a beautiful site that either nobody will find or offers a hideous consumer experience?

Image Credits

Featured Image: Unsplash

All screenshots by Katya Bovykina. Taken June 2017.

Resourse: https://searchenginejournal.com/common-web-design-mistakes/202258/

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