How Web Design Services Help You Avoid These 7 Mistakes

Have you spent countless hours designing your website, only to be disappointed with the poor visitor response? Choosing an appealing theme, inserting plenty of images, and explaining about yourself and your products are important, but your attention to detail should not end here. 

That’s because all the hard work in designing your website will go waste if nobody sees it. If your website fails to reach the first page of Google results, then that is a likely event. 99% of the people who use Google Search don’t bother going past the first page or the first three pages at the most. So, if your website isn’t at the top, then it might as well be invisible.

But what if you can turn things around with SEO, by making some changes to the web design? 

Errors in Web Design that May be Harming Your Website’s SEO

In this post, we will uncover the seven biggest mistakes in web design from an SEO perspective. When you understand what may be wrong with it, you can fix them yourself or have web design services jump in and fix those for you, so that you can finally bridge the gap between your website and visitors as soon as possible.

 

1. Lack of Mobile-Friendliness 

With a majority of people owning at least one smartphone, you can expect them to use it for digital media. In fact, over fifty percent of web traffic originates from smartphones and mobile devices around the world. This revelation led to Google’s mobile-first indexing, which means that mobile-friendly versions are given priority terms of indexing and, subsequently, ranking.  

So, now’s the time to ask whether your website is optimized for mobile because it is sure to remain invisible otherwise. Additionally, non-mobile-friendly websites lose up to four times as many visitors as their mobile-friendly counterparts do. It doesn’t take too much effort and is vital in order to gain those visitors.

 

2. Absent H1 Tags 

Search engine crawlers begin crawling a website by searching for the H1 tag. So, your website needs to have these, particularly on the Home page. Otherwise, it will surely lag in the SERPs. H1 tags are really helpful for your visitors as well. That’s because they offer a quick reference regarding what the site is about at a glance.

To gain the most from your H1 tag, follow these three tips –

• A well-placed H1 tag, preferably above the fold, let’s viewers spot it easily before they scroll down. 
• Make sure your H1 tag has a primary keyword.
• Try the 5-second test – people should be able to understand what the page is about in five seconds, otherwise, you have to simplify it.

 

3. Missing 404 Page

A 404 page is necessary because it keeps the visitors on your website. It can also take them to another useful page. A bit of imagination can even turn it into an amusing page for visitors instead of something that annoys them. 404 pages are also recommended by specialists who offer SEO services because they often prevent website visitors from leaving too quickly.

 

4. Delayed Loading 

People all over the internet either have very little time, or patience, or both. Many of them are constantly on the move, scrolling through their media, skimming over headlines, and sending away emails at lightning speed. Therefore, you must ensure that your website loads within seconds of clicking or they’ll move on before you realize.

For this, it is important that you choose your website’s design elements carefully. Ensure they don’t increase the load time of your website. That means no heavy and sluggish themes, no matter how unique they are. In case you’ve chosen professional web design services, they can help you do this. 

You may have to go for something tried and tested in the beginning; after all, there’s a reason they are preferred over hundreds of beautiful and useful themes available in the market.

 

5. Confusing Site Navigation

Some websites are so cramped with content that users have no clue how to proceed once they do reach them. If you’ve ever had to navigate through such difficult websites, you already know what you don’t want your website to look like to your visitors.

Keeping the content on your website intriguing yet easy to understand will help your visitors and Google’s web crawlers. It can easily be done when the emphasis is placed on internal linking between essential pages. 

 

6. Endless Scrolling

Have you ever scrolled to the bottom of the web page to find that loading wheel every single time? That’s called an infinite scroll, and a large number of websites still use it. Infinite scrolling is harming the website’s SEO because Google bots don’t scroll. As a result, they are unable to index the content of the pages beyond the first one. 

For instance, your website contains 50 posts and the default display setting only shows 10 at a time. So, when Google crawls your website, the bots won’t be aware of the content just after those ten listings. If you have hired professional web design services, they usually advise against infinite scroll for this reason.

 

7. Heavy Media Elements on the Website

Images and media that are large in size have to be avoided, no matter how tempted you may feel to include those on your website. These can really slow down your website, and you can find out if this is the case by running it through Google’s PageSpeed Insights Test. You can still have the same images as long as they are compressed or scaled accordingly.

 

Summary

You’re aware of all the efforts that you’ve made in designing our website. Now is the time to show your hard work to your viewers! Therefore, your next step is to ensure they actually find your beautiful, appealing, and refined website on Google. 

If you haven’t been able to receive the results you anticipated despite all the SEO efforts, check whether your website has any of these web design issues and have them fixed ASAP. Doing so will surely help your website improve in the SERPs.