The most common web design mistakes that hurt SEO and how to avoid them

If your website is not getting as many as visitors you would like or you just want to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck, it makes sense to know a little about web design. Having a well-designed website is crucial for your business, and some poor choices could negatively impact performance and results. A website should look nice and offer a great UI experience, but certain technical things are also necessary for the search engines to show you some love.

Whether you’re redesigning a new website or starting from scratch, you always need to keep function at priority in place of beauty. Here are ten of the most common web design mistakes that can hurt your SEO. Put these things at the top to avoid.

Missing H1 Tags

Your website might look wonderful, with a stylish design, attractive colours, and user-friendly fonts. Unfortunately, the search engines won’t give it the time of the day if it doesn’t include the right elements in the code.

One essential SEO element is having H1 tags which tell the search engines what a page is about. The inclusion of these factors will improve your chances of ranking higher. Ideally, the H1 tags will include descriptive keywords and phrases which are searched often and will help drive the right traffic to your page.

Page load time

Google has now said that page load speed is a big factor in your website ranking. Ignoring this may cause a big detriment. The quantity and size of your media files impact your page load speed. Some other factors are the plugins you use, the user’s internet connection, speed and the web host.

Having a fast speed page loading is important to your website. You should keep your server response time around 200ms.

Not mobile-friendly 

In the year 2018, over half 52.2 % of all global online traffic was generated through mobile devices. Every website should be mobile-friendly, and those who are not will suffer obviously.

As of 2015, Google began penalizing sites that were not mobile-friendly with less online visibility. It is simple enough to choose a responsive website design
that will adjust itself according to the device being used to view the website.

Infinite Scroll

Infinite scroll allows the user to continue scrolling down as more data and pages continue to load. It may be a popular feature on the website, but it is not SEO-friendly.

By default, search engines crawl links only. So, they will not know that your page, which is set to show five of the most recent posts, will show the user 50 if they scroll down. You can make your infinite scroll website more SEO friendly by following some instructions on the Google webmaster blog.

Popups

Popups are not only irritating for website visitors, but search engines are also now cracking down on these unpleasant ads. If your website has a popup appear before the user can get a look at the content, you might find that your search engine rankings may suffer.

Thin Content Pages

Content is one of the top factors that search engines consider determining your ranking. Your content should not be only high quality, but also original. Failing to understand this concept can fall in terms of ranking.

Websites that try to get ranking with too little content or plagiarized content cannot rank well. As per Hubspot
, the fewer the content a website has, the lesser the organic traffic it will attract.

Unsecure Website

Falling to lock down your website with SSL certificate could result in a rank drop. Having an SSL certificate not only protect the right things to do, but it has also become good business.

Conclusion

Whether you are trying to figure out why your site is not getting results, embarking on a redesign, or working on a new website, always keep this common design mistakes in the mind. After all, what is the purpose of keeping a good website, if no potential can find it or understand it?