The internet is a highly competitive place. Millions of websites are trying to attract users for their purposes. Data from Siteefy shows that there are around 1.14 billion websites worldwide. Of these, only 17% are active, while 83% are inactive. However, you still need to rank even among the remaining 17% of active websites.
If your website isn’t good enough, you’ll lose out on sales, leads, and visitors. Luckily, there are many things you can do to improve your website’s performance without spending any money. In this post, we’ll go through some common mistakes that ruin the user experience and hurt SEO (search engine optimization) and how they can be fixed.
Slow Speed
Speed matters. Slower websites will experience lower search engine rankings because of higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. The reason is simple; people are impatient creatures who don’t want to wait for your website to load.
SEO experts say your website should load in 3 seconds or less. If visitors have to wait more than 3 seconds before they can read what you wrote on the page or start searching through your content, chances are they won’t bother coming back at all, even if they find exactly what they’re looking for.
Lack of Focus on Technical SEO
While it’s tempting to ignore the technical aspects of SEO, it can help you get more traffic and conversions. But how do you know which tools are right for your business? First, start by asking yourself a few questions:
- What is my budget?
- Do I have time to learn new things?
- How much technical knowledge do I already have?
If the answer to these questions is less or no, hiring a professional may be worth it. If not, here are some tips for finding inexpensive or free technical SEO tools that work well together:
- Google Analytics: This is one of the essential tools in any web designer’s toolkit. It gives you detailed information about how people use your site. It lets you track visitors over time so that they don’t become “lost” between visits or bounce off the website before completing their purchase.
- Google Search Console: This tool allows developers like yourself access to our search engine results in pages’ features like crawl errors and index status updates, valuable insights into where we stand vis-à-vis competitors who may be beating us out in terms of visibility online.
Operating these tools requires expertise. Hence, it is best to seek help from an SEO agency. When selecting an SEO company for web design, go for a local one. This will have many benefits. The first and foremost benefit you get is expertise with local SEO and trends. This can come in handy, especially if you are a startup looking to attract only local customers.
Another benefit is regular meetups to discuss website design. This will ensure clear communication between you and the design agency for the best results. For instance, suppose your business is located in Tampa. In that case, an SEO company from Tampa, Florida, will understand what the local customers are looking for in a website.
It will also be familiar with local keywords related to Tampa city and include them in the website and coding. This will take your website rankings even higher in the long run by making the website easily accessible by Google crawlers and bots. Hence, if you are in Tampa, hire a Tampa SEO company. Likewise, If your branch is in Los Angeles or New York, go for an SEO agency in those locations.
Not Focusing on Mobile Friendliness
Mobile-friendly websites are more likely to rank higher than their desktop counterparts. According to Statista, mobile devices now account for nearly 59% of all website traffic and have even overtaken desktops as the most popular way to browse the web.
In fact, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you will lose out on your potential visitors, as visitors are 5 times more likely to leave a website that is not mobile-friendly.
With so many people shopping on their phones these days, it’s crucial that businesses optimize their websites for smartphones as well as tablets before it becomes too late. Currently, the speed at which mobile websites load is lower than desktop sites. Backlinko’s analysis of 5 million websites across desktop and mobile shows that an average webpage loads 87.84% slower to load on mobile compared to desktop.
Poor Website Navigation
Navigation is the process by which users can find what they’re looking for on your website. It should be easy to find and use, consistent across all site pages, and easy to scan. In addition to making helpful navigation, it needs to be current and easily updated over time.
The best way to achieve this is by using a “navigation” dropdown menu at the top of every page on your site. This will allow visitors with disabilities who use screen readers to access important information such as an “about us” page or contact information without having their screen filled up with links that are just not needed now.
Irrelevant Pop-Ups
When it comes to pop-ups, it’s all about the timing. When you interrupt your visitor’s experience with an irrelevant or poorly designed pop-up, they’ll be more likely to abandon your site. This can impact your SEO rankings.
Of course, other ways of using pop-ups don’t involve making your visitors feel like they’re being bombarded by aggressive salesmen on every page they visit. These include:
- Use a simple “buy now” button instead of a full-on sales pitch.
- Showing content that matches the page that the visitor came from. For example, if someone is reading an article about car insurance and then sees a pop-up with information about different types of coverage options available at his or her current company, that may be helpful information to have handy when talking shop with friends over dinner later tonight.
Conclusion
When you’re getting started with your web design, there are a lot of variables to consider. It can be hard to know what matters and what doesn’t. But don’t worry. With these tips, you can make sure that your site is beautiful and SEO-friendly from the start. We hope this article helped you understand some of the pitfalls of designing for SEO and how we avoid them at our agency.