The secret to designing a great website is to create one that appeals to human users and search engines alike. This means taking care to not prioritise aesthetics over beauty or placing function in the way of a site that doesn’t visually appeal or engage the user. What are the most common mistakes that you should avoid?
Pop-ups
Any agency specialising in web design in Belfast will tell you that pop-ups are a no-no. Google has recently issued a warning that it will look unfavourably on the use of pop-ups because they diminish the user experience, especially on mobile phones and tablets. As a result, it will lessen SEO impact and user experience by preventing visitors from immediately accessing content.
Infinite scroll
This design feature has been popular with some designers but if it is done poorly, it can have a highly negative impact on SEO. Because infinite scrolls load greater amounts of content as the user travels downwards, the search engines cannot quickly and accurately crawl pages and will adjust your page ranking accordingly.
H1 Tags
Many businesses accidentally remove H1 tags because they can’t find a home for them on website pages. However, H1 tags are a priority when it comes to search engines and their work to ascertain what pages are about to rank them. Focus on including both keywords and an H1 tag to rapidly improve your chances of ranking well. Find out more at http://www.rycomarketing.co.uk/web-design-belfast-northern-ireland.html.
Light content
Your most important website pages are your landing pages and product or service pages. However, some websites will not have these detail pages or list every part of the product offer on one page. Another issue is having insufficient content on key pages or failing to incorporate keywords and other useful content such as images, videos and user resources. Invest in good, thorough content for results.
Remember that these tips apply to existing websites and new builds alike. For a new build, your web designer is very likely to be taking these factors into account in their proposed design, so it is wise to take their guidance in this specialist field. For an existing site, it can be worth commissioning a specialist review to ascertain whether your website is performing as well as it should.