A website can significantly boost a company’s popularity, bring new clients, and improve its ROI. At the same time, a low-quality website can cause the company to lose out on those aspects. The Plerdy team has prepared an overview of popular SEO and UX mistakes that can repel customers and have a knock-on effect in terms of revenue, as well as rankings.
Quality website optimization is one of the most important elements of content-marketing, With its potential to attract new users to the site and eventually level up the business, SEO remains in the spotlight of marketing professionals’ attention.
User demands are constantly growing while search engines strive to satisfy those requirements, which in turn encourages the development of SEO methods. Since following the latest trends in optimization and conducting timely audits can be rather challenging at times, companies often make the wrong decisions and leave serious SEO mistakes unnoticed until they adversely affect their websites’ performance.
So what are some of the most common mistakes sites still make?
The first mistake many companies make, especially when they start out, is attempting to do everything on their own. SEO is a very complex task, which not only takes knowledge and continuous development, but also a lot of time.
Many marketers know the very basics but still firmly believe that they can handle any task on their own - be it audits, UX analysis, or SEO; which may cost their companies a lot of time and money. In this case, entrusting these tasks to professionals who are aware of the latest trends in the industry and are ready to work on the project at any time is a much better idea.
This is another common SEO mistake. At this point, it is crucial to understand that your definition of the products you aim to market does not always match the key phrases that users enter in the search box on your site or search for online. For this reason, quality SEO needs properly selected and research keywords.
Stuffing your content with keywords is a losing strategy. As a result, the content on your website will sound unnatural and won't be useful to your audience. Your site is also likely to be penalized by search engines. Take a better approach by studying your audits to see which keywords are performing best. You should also aim to make use of latent semantic indexing (LSI).
We all want results quickly but the use of fast promotion methods, such as “Black Hat” tactics is a trap awaiting those who try to get everything at once. For quality SEO, you should employ safe methods and conduct continuous usability audits rather than seeking quick solutions.
Search engines do not welcome websites that are trying to crack the system and thus introduce restriction policies or even ban such resources. Shady SEO methods will only bring in fines and bans, so they should be avoided at all costs.
The use of spam backlinks is another “black” SEO method. It is aimed at getting additional links to your resource using shady SEO methods. Not only is this method not really effective, but it can also see your website get penalized.
Very often high-volume key words are less efficient than phrases that offer less traffic. This is quite obvious: traffic alone does not do the trick; conversion is what matters. It can be tracked with analytics packages such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms to ensure the best UX, filtering out scam websites. To ensure adequate SEO that translates into high conversion rates, one should keep up with the latest SEO trends and undertake regular website audit.
This is a very serious blunder as search engines strive to offer websites with relevant information of high quality, so their filtering methods are constantly improving. It's important to invest time and money into quality content for it to yield a long-term effect.
By using text borrowed from some other website, you put your resource at risk of being filtered out of search results. As a rule, search engines identify the primary source of the content and hide the duplicate texts, so you need to be creating unique and informative content.
You have to audit your website regularly. all pages should load fast, have a mobile adaptive design, and fully comply with the user requirements. Usability is now a signal taken seriously by Google and other search engines so it can affect your rankings.
Lack of unique headings and meta descriptions is a serious mistake, which is often caught during website audits. Remember that each page should have a unique title tag not only for SEO purposes but also for usability. Meta descriptions, which advertize your page in the search results, are also important.
Not using social networks and promotional websites is one more common SEO mistake. Nowadays, social networks offer many chances for attracting attention to a web resource, so it is important to give your users an opportunity to share your content in social networks.
Web design is an art responsible for combining both the form and useful functions of a website. Your site should be visually attractive, interesting, and user-friendly in order to encourage visits and conversion. To achieve these goals, it is essential to follow certain rules, conduct regular UX audits, and constantly improve the website usability.
However, even though any information can be found on the web and specific website audit templates are available, there are still a lot of sites that are extremely far from the modern UX design standards.
Quality UI should provide the user with all the necessary information on who to contact, where to find a particular product or service, and who will answer the questions that might arise. Only such a UX design can smoothly lead the user to the next
Website usability audits should be performed continuously, but many website owners forget about this control method. Remember that you can only protect your investments if you keep track of the progress and analyze any potential issues. With ready-made templates at your service, you can easily test and adjust the ways your website works, as there are a lot of specific tools designed for this purpose.
Top ranks in search engines are not achieved in a day or without any effort. There is no magic wand that can get you there instantly. That is why it is so important to work on SEO, test the website design, and conduct audits, taking into account all of the latest trends in the industry and avoiding shady optimization methods. Ensuring a good SEO strategy will help provide better UX.
Another common mistake is the lack of easy-to-access communication channel. Web design should attract users’ attention, and the company’s contact details must be easy to find on the website in case any issues arise.
Not having a mobile version can translate into a total failure for a website as mobile adaptiveness is one of the prerequisites of quality UX. Nowadays, the main bulk of internet traffic is accessed from smartphones and tablets, so users are not willing to visit websites that look awkward and cumbersome on their mobile devices.
Page load time should not exceed three seconds. Believe it or not, three seconds equals to eternity for most users when it comes to loading websites - especially if they are using their mobile device to search. UX design should be quick and efficient, so you need to get your site loading as quickly as possible.
Illegible fonts, lengthy texts are also a common problem in UX design. Complex and verbose content prompts visitors to switch to a more user-friendly source.
As tests show, most users look at H1 and H2 tags to find out if the website offers the information they need, so do not ignore this aspect. Ensure that your headings are unique and informative.
Bad UX is also associated with complicated and confusing website navigation. Ensure that the navigation menu and the information provided on your website are presented in an easily understandable way. Avoid using complex templates, extra-long pages, especially when it comes to mobile versions.
To show you exactly what these mistakes can look like, we've outlined some of those that have been made by real companies on the web.
Search engines, which should be studied diligently by any marketing and SEO specialist, are not a formal discipline that can be learned once and for all. They are constantly changing and developing and so require the constant engagement of the specialist who works with them.
That’s why so many myths and misleading information surround them, which often causes serious SEO and UX mistakes. By collaborating with unreliable companies, trying to do everything on your own, or using fast and dirty solutions, you can practically bring your website to its end.
So, we have listed some of the most common mistakes in SEO and web design for you to avoid them. The ten website examples can clearly show the absolute dos and don’ts of SEO and web design that should never be disregarded if you wish your website to live a long life and bring great results.
Taking part in the design and development of more than 400 online stores, the turnover of which is from 0 to million dollars, now he is an ideologist and CEO of PLERDY — SaaS for advanced Internet marketers.
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