Your website isn\u2019t getting as many visitors as you think it should! Or maybe you\u2019ve got lots of traffic but you\u2019re still not selling anything!<\/p>\n
Even if your site looks great, you may be running up against one of these common web design mistakes that hurt SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it doesn\u2019t matter whether you hired a kid to build a cheap website or you spent a fortune on professional web design<\/a>. Most web designers<\/a> just aren\u2019t qualified to practice high level search engine optimization.<\/p>\n Read on to learn these top web design mistakes<\/a> and how to avoid and fix them.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve got to have the right words in the right places for effective SEO. So start by finding the right words.<\/p>\n There are several free tools like the\u00a0Google AdWords Keyword Tool<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0UberSuggest<\/a>\u00a0that will help you zero in on the best keywords to use on your website.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve identified the right words, Perfect SEO cheat sheet to make sure you put those Right Words in the Right Places.<\/p>\n On your pages, there should be html code called heading tags that indicate what is the main headline, what is the second most important headline and so on. Sometimes we call them H tags or Hx tags.<\/p>\n When you put something inside these H tags, you\u2019re saying \u201cThis is what my page is about!\u201d<\/p>\n This can be great for SEO because the search engines really try to understand the meaning of your content. They want you to show up when your content is\u00a0relevant<\/strong>\u00a0to a searcher\u2019s query. Proper use of heading tags can really improve your relevancy score with Google.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, these tags are misused by many web designers. Common misuse includes:<\/p>\n All these seo mistakes<\/a> make it harder for the search engines to understand what your page is about. That hurts SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n Want to learn more about the reasons behind this? Search on poor semantic markup. That\u2019s the fancy term for using heading tags the wrong way.<\/p>\n Ask a web designer<\/a> or developer<\/a> to shave a second off the time it takes your page to load and you may get comments like: Wrong answers.<\/strong><\/p>\n Page load speed is more important than ever. 1st, Google has\u00a0officially said<\/a>\u00a0that it\u2019s a ranking factor. Second, Google has been pushing the idea of \u201cgreat user experience\u201d alot and one of the top factors they list is page speed.<\/p>\n Speeding up websites is important \u2014 not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users\u2026 \u2013\u00a0Google<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The guys who run the Walmart website made an awesome presentation on how speed impacts the bottom line. They documented their efforts to reduce the load speed of their website pages and how a faster website had a double whammy:\u00a0improved conversion rates<\/strong>\u00a0and a\u00a0decreased bounce rate<\/strong>. Here are my favorite parts:<\/p>\n (There was a) sharp decline in conversion rate as average load speed time increases from 1 to 4 seconds \u2013 Walmart<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bounce rate strongly correlates to page speed \u2013 Walmart<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I see so many websites that miss this easy SEO opportunity.<\/p>\n Pages and images that are named something like example.com\/12-rrpwJ1.html don\u2019t give any clue what they\u2019re about. On the other hand, I bet you can tell what this page is about: Name your files something descriptive and Google will give you a little boost.<\/p>\n Time and time again, I\u2019ve heard this story: Before you let somebody touch your website, make sure they understand why you\u2019re doing well. If they don\u2019t understand, they may eliminate the reasons why your website is performing. If your old website is getting traffic that you don\u2019t want to lose, consider hiring an SEO expert to consult on your project instead of trusting a web designer<\/a> that doesn\u2019t understand the difference between your PageRank and your page\u2019s rank.<\/p>\n At minimum, make sure they know which pages on your website have incoming, external links and use 301 redirects to point your old pages to the corresponding new pages.<\/p>\n Everything that your web design company<\/a> does for you should be listed in your name, not theirs.<\/p>\n Face it, relationships end, sometimes badly. When you need to leave your web designer<\/a> for somebody else, you don\u2019t want to have to fight for control of your domain name. I\u2019ve had the experience of dealing with several clients that had lost control of their domains to previous web partners<\/a>. It\u2019s not fun to have to change your email, your biz cards, stationery and sign just because the old guys are being jerks. Stop what you\u2019re doing now and make sure your domain is registered in your name. Having to change your website is the ultimate way to hurt SEO.<\/p>\n Same goes for who controls your Google Analytics account. Make sure it\u2019s setup under a Google account that you company owns. Your historical analytics data is extremely valuable. Without it, you just can\u2019t do effective ongoing SEO. Make sure your analytics data belongs to you permanently.<\/p>\n What Now?<\/strong><\/p>\n To avoid these common web desig<\/a>n mistakes that hurt SEO<\/a>, share this article with your web design partner<\/a> and have a discussion about how you can improve your total web presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your website isn\u2019t getting as many visitors as you think it should! Or maybe you\u2019ve got lots of traffic but you\u2019re still not selling anything! Even if your site looks great, you may be running up against one of these common web design mistakes that hurt SEO. And it doesn\u2019t matter whether you hired a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[161,47],"tags":[406,731,405],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seo","category-web-design","tag-mistake-of-seo","tag-seo","tag-seo-mistake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.santoshkori.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Poor Choice of Keywords<\/h2>\n
2. Incorrect Use of Heading Tags<\/h2>\n
\n
3. Page Speed<\/h2>\n
\nWe need all those high quality graphics to accurately portray our brand\u2019s image.<\/em>
\nor\u00a0People like to see those animations on web pages.<\/em>
\nor\u00a0It\u2019ll take too long to re-code how our page loads.<\/em>
\nor\u00a0They don\u2019t mind waiting a few more seconds because our site is so awesome.<\/em>
\nor (my favorite)\u00a0Everybody\u2019s got broadband.<\/em><\/p>\n4. Poor URL and File Names<\/h2>\n
\nwww.example.com\/Best-Freaking-Lawyer-in-Nashville.html<\/strong><\/p>\n5. Web Redesign that Ignores SEO & Existing Rankings<\/h2>\n
\nWe were getting lots of business from the web but it all disappeared after we redesigned our website.<\/em><\/p>\nBonus Tip: Domain Registered in Web Designer\u2019s Name<\/h2>\n