Most web designers have no clue when it comes to true search engine optimization. Most feel that as long as they stick a few H1 and H2 tags, image ALT attributes, and meta tags in a web page, their work is done. Every seasoned SEO professional knows that is both completely false and dangerous. Indeed, once your web design is complete, that is when the real work begins.
However, some time experts make mistakes that have a negative effect on SEO. Sometimes because of ignorance and other times because they overlook basic details. So today, I need to help you avoid that by sharing some of the website mistakes I commonly see that kill SEO effort.
Slow page speed
It matters any way you look at it. Nobody likes to wait for a page to load, and it’s truer than at any other time in a mobile first world.
According to Aberdeen Group, a 1-second delay in page-load time may transform into:
- 11 percent fewer page views
- a critical decrease in customer satisfaction
- up to a 7 percent loss in conversions
A variety of studies say that a page should load in 2 seconds or less. That is the optimal result.
The reality is different, though. The “average loading speed” is between 9.82 and 13.84 seconds. An examination conducted by SEOchat points out that if a site’s loading speed is below 9.82 seconds, it might be considered very quick compared with the average websites positioning in Google at the principal position.
Another examination, presented in Google’s Site Performance for Webmasters video, states that “2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we go for under a half-second.”
What’s pivotal is that time equals money for e-commerce websites. Amazon, for example, reported an increase of 1 percent for every 100 milliseconds of improvement to the loading speed. Walmart, on the other hand, found that every 1 second of speed equals a 2 percent increase in conversions.
Too many distractions
One of the most important aspects of website design is having enough white space around text, titles, pictures, and buttons because it can increase conversion rates by as much as 20 percent. Insane Egg declares this also has an “emotional effect on your users’ experience and their acquiring decisions.”
Most important information above the page fold
It’s enormous. Very enormous! Make sure the most fundamental information is displayed immediately. The research mentioned above (Stanford, remember?) states that you should:
- Make it easy for your visitors to contact you
- Show that honest and trustworthy people remain behind the site
- Show that there’s a real organization behind the site
- Make it easy to verify the precision of the information on the site
- Practice restraint when it comes to any promotional offers
That is all legitimate, yet what you should also consider is implementing a submit or registration form that is as simple to use as would be prudent. Less is better. As a rule.
Don’t complicate your phrasing
There’s a little something called the Flesch Reading Ease Test that measures textual trouble. The lower the score, the more troublesome it is to read the text.
The Flesch score uses sentence length and number of syllables per word in an equation to calculate reading ease. There’s even a scale:
- 90-100: the text is easily understood by an average 11-year-old student
- 60-70: the text is easily understood by 13-to 15-year-old students
- 0-30: the text is best understood by university graduates
No RWD
This has been stated, written, recorded, videotaped (because for what reason not) such huge numbers of times that you must’ve seen it already.
Not having a responsive web design is terrible. So terrible that Google sees your website as not mobile-friendly because the text is too little or the connections too close together, and it restrains the perceivability of your site in search results.
Wondering how RWD translates to business? As a matter of first importance, you increase your reach to tablet and mobile audiences, widening your target group. Second, and most important, you increase sales and conversion on those devices.
No CTA (or a CTA that is not clear enough)
You need a CTA (Call to Action) at the earliest opportunity. Showing it above the fold would be perfect. It tells your visitors what to do immediately after they arrive on the site.
The CTA should be placed in the sweet spot of your page. Play around with heatmaps (we use Hotjar for that), and locate the perfect place. It may not necessarily be above the fold. Contentverve ran some tests and figured out that “CTA placed path below the fold (… ) of a very long point of arrival altogether outperformed a variation with the CTA at the top of the page. The increase was 304 percent.”
Not thinking about SEO enough
I could write about SEO throughout the day – yet chances are, you’re not here for that. Let me simply point out several basic aspects that might be harming your conversion rates and perceivability in Google.
Beginning from the bottom, you need to use investigation and see where you’re getting your customers from. It’s one thing to use SEO for receiving organic activity, another to know what converts best.
You may set out to dominate a generic phrase (like “web design” or “mobile development”), however more often than not, you get the most conversions from more specific keywords. Above all else, it’s immensely difficult to rank for these super-competitive keywords. Consider choosing something that is more related to your niche.
Social proof and reputation
Social proof matters for several reasons. Do you remember the last time you bought a book? On the back cover, you probably found brief blurbs from other authors or authorities in the business. It’s the same with companies that need to be quoted by respected and recognizable media sources. Also, it’s the reason why we’re utilizing testimonials from our clients.
Nowadays, receiving social proof is easier than it was path back when. For some, it might be enough to include sharing buttons wherever you can (provided you won’t destroy your UX). Even checking whether a brand’s Facebook or Twitter account is active is an important flag to potential customers.
In today’s world, an absence of social proof may suggest you haven’t done anything impressive. It sells your aptitudes, your talent, your accessibility. On the off chance that you don’t let people verify your company on their own easily, they won’t take the time to do it in a more complicated manner.
Low-Quality Content and Imagery
Let’s say you use Google to search for “how to locate the best web design company.” The principal connect appears, and you tap on it only to see a boring SEO article about what “web design” is. That is not the way. You’ll probably return to the search results.
Then you’ll click a different connection. This time, you arrive on a long-form, properly researched and presented article focusing on your needs and expectations. You know what questions to ask while meeting the web design company representatives and what sort of answers you should receive. You spend more time on the website getting value from it while acclimating yourself with the enterprise that produced the content.
