Promoting your business in today’s online marketplace takes strong SEO. Since about 70% of the links web users click are organic, you likely do everything you can to boost your site’s SEO. But do you pay attention to the small factors that could be hurting your ranks? Often, web design is to blame for holding a website back from full optimization. While the website might have a strong aesthetic design, there might be small mistakes quietly harming your site’s SEO and digital marketing as a whole. The following are some of these common errors.
- New Windows
Clicking on a link and opening a new window used to be the norm. In fact, it may have even been a trend. Now any quality web design company knows that this feature uses up site data and decreases site usability. A streamlined approach is best. - Hidden Contact Info
Web design best practices tell you to place your contact info in several visible places. However, many firms skip this step. When a user can’t find your contact information to call for more information, they are more likely to click away. And that means fewer views on your other pages. - Large Media Files
High quality images are key to digital marketing, but it’s possible to take this too far. If your photos, videos, and graphics are bigger than they need to be, you might be unnecessarily slowing down your page load times. This mistake will also cause users to click away and decrease your page views. - Infinite Scroll
While infinite scroll is a trend, particularly in blogging, it can be confusing for Google’s crawlers. This is especially true if the page is indexed incorrectly. While a human user will know to load more posts once they get to the bottom, the crawler’s won’t. Then they will only index a fraction of the links you actually have on your site. - Text In Images
It’s a common web design and digital marketing trend to place text over images, but this is only effective if you do it correctly. If a website designer places a keyword on a graphic in a design program and then uploads this image, Google will see it as an image exclusively. To get SEO value out of this text, place the text over the image on your website. - Little Social Linking
By not integrating your social pages and your website, you might be missing out on an SEO boost. You site’s social buttons should be placed on several pages on your website (the footer is a common place). Similarly, your website should be linked in all of your social profiles.
Remember: The best way to catch these web design mistakes is to work with a professional search engine marketing firm. This way, you can get expert advice on your design and other SEO strategies. And if done well, this should bump your site in the rankings and increase traffic.