5 web design mistakes that can sabotage your SEO efforts
So, you know that your business needs a website – maybe you even ticked that box a long time ago. What’s more, you’ve spent the time, effort and (probably!) money to make it look chef’s kiss.
Yet… No one’s finding it. Your website analytics are gathering more dust than the DVDs that live in your attic and the silence is deafening.
But why? What’s blocking your dream audience from landing on that sales page or dropping hook, line and sinker into your services?
???? We’re going to let you in on a secret ????
The truth is, those web design choices that you raved about? They could actually be quietly sabotaging your SEO efforts. Picture it as a sports car that you keep trying to drive with the handbrake on. Luckily, we’re here to help. ‘Cos not only are we web design experts, but we’re also SEO gurus. And we’re all about the ‘sharing’s caring’ approach to life.
Grab a drink and dive in right now or pin this page for later. You won’t regret it!
Web design mistake #1: Ignoring mobile responsiveness.
Remember when we all started browsing the web exclusively on desktops? Well, those days are long gone! Today, over 60% of all global website traffic comes from mobile devices. By 2025, it’s anticipated that there will be over 1 billion 5G connections globally. If your website isn’t mobile-responsive, you’re essentially waving goodbye to half your potential audience – and Google knows it.
Google’s mobile-first indexing means that it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing. So, if your site looks like a jigsaw puzzle on a smartphone with slooooow loading speeds, expect your rankings to tank. Not only will this frustrate users, but Google will penalise you for it.?
Many website designers actually opt for mobile-first in their design strategy; by this we mean designing, developing and marketing a digital product with mobile in mind, first and foremost. The idea is that if you kickstart digital transformation by focusing on a user experience that is effective on a mobile device, then the rest of the devices will follow.?
Time to make sure your site looks fabulous on screens of all sizes!
Web design mistake #2. Slow loading speeds.
Let us paint a picture for you: you click on a website, and it takes more than three seconds to load. What do you do? If you’re like most people, you hit the back button faster than N-Sync bidding the world “bye, bye, bye!” In fact, 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load, with the ideal website load time for mobile sites being between one and two seconds.
Google has even higher expectations. The search engine (and all knowing, all seeing eye of the digi-sphere) loves fast-loading websites, practising what they preach with an aim to load sites in under half a second. They’ve also made it clear that speed is a ranking factor; this has been the case since 2010 (so no excuses!). A slow site not only irks users but also sends a clear signal to Google that your website isn’t user-friendly.?
Ways that you can speed up your site include:
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Web design mistake #3: Overcomplicating your site’s navigation.
We’ve all been there—landing on a site that’s a labyrinth of menus, submenus, and hidden links. Not only is it confusing, tiring and complicated for the sake of complicated, but it’s also a big no-no for SEO. It’s simple, really. Google’s crawlers need to easily navigate your site to understand its structure and content.
This is where SEO-optimised navigation comes in. You need to encourage your potential customers and search engines to move from point A to point B with as much ease as possible. Your site navigation needs to help not hinder you, ensuring search engines can crawl your website and understand which pages hold the most authority. If your navigation is a mess, both users and search engines will struggle to find what they need.? It can dilute your link equity and be a real dampener on your digital marketing success.?
That’s why successful websites will use clear, descriptive labels for their menu items, with a simple and logical navigation. They’ll also incorporate keywords naturally, limit dropdown menus and use a consistent structure across all pages. This way, they keep their users happy, and give Google exactly what it needs to? crawl their site more efficiently.
Web design mistake #4: Flashy designs with heavy graphics.
Sure, that massive background video and those high-res images look stunning, but are they worth the price you’re paying in SEO? When your site is overloaded with large graphics and flashy animations, it can slow down your page load speed (which we all know by now is a big SEO red flag ??????) and even make your site less accessible to users with slower internet connections.
Plus, search engines have a hard time interpreting images and videos unless they’re properly optimised with alt text and descriptions. So, while you want to dazzle visitors, don’t forget to keep things streamlined. Optimise your images, use lazy loading, and consider whether that autoplay video is really necessary.
Web design mistake #5. Missing out on header tags.
Header tags are SEO’s secret weapon. Header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are like the skeleton of your content – they give structure and tell both users and search engines what’s important on the page. Without them, your content becomes a wall of text that’s hard to read and even harder to rank.
However, it seems that this secret weapon is a little too secret. An informal poll on Twitter / X found that over half of 2,000 voters (working in SEO) didn’t actually know what Google’s recommendations on headings were ??
In fact, another study found that 20% of sites have multiple H1 tags on certain pages, 20% are missing H1 altogether, while 15% have duplicate content in H1 and title.?
This is a BIG problem. These little tags are the road signs of your website, giving your dream clients the structure to read your content in bite-sized, digestible chunks so that they can scan it with relative ease and find what they need. Plus, they help Google find the key topics and keywords in your text so that it can (you guessed it) amp up your SEO ranking.
In short, they’re essential for creating a well-organised, readable, and search-engine-friendly website!
Can Littlebigbox help bring my SEO and website design into alignment.?
Web design and SEO are like a cuppa and a custard cream – they’re best when they work together. And here at Littlebigbox, we’re all about walking side by side with SEO on our website development journey.
If you’re ready to take your website from “meh” to “magnificent” then drop us a line. Not only does our team consist of a-ma-zing website developers, designers, copywriters and administrators, but we also have a specialist SEO expert on hand to get your site in front of ALL the right people.?
Book a call here. We can’t wait to connect.
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2 个月Web aesthetics sabotaging rankings - learn optimization principles. April Hodge