SEO website design is an essential component of marketing a business, and can especially be a challenge for small business owners. In today’s rapidly changing, competitive, and ever-dynamic digital landscape, it is as important as ever to rank higher on search engines. Website design can and should incorporate SEO in order to drive customers to your website, increasing conversion rates. This holds particularly true for businesses in small cities such as St. Petersburg, Florida, where the range of potential customers is less extensive than that of larger cities. This article will cover 5 common SEO website design mistakes, and how businesses in areas such as St. Petersburg can optimize their traffic and conversions by fixing them.
Poor Usability
Research on SEO website design has shown that usability has a significant impact on conversion rates. Customers who can use your website without hassle will be more likely to ultimately make a purchase. A pleasing, professional-looking layout will also increase the perceived trustworthiness for your site. Use a highly readable font whose color goes well with the page’s background. It is also best to avoid using pop-ups, as they can be a nuisance.
Furthermore, you should consider not only the aesthetics, but also the structure and functionality of your website. Make sure the pages of your website load quickly; slow-loading sites may cause people to leave your website before they even see it. There should also be clear categories and subcategories; finding what one is looking for should be as easy as going through the most meticulously kept filing cabinet. In short, just as nobody wants to read a recipe with obscure font, confusing instructions, and shoddy pictures, nobody wants to go through a website that is difficult to navigate and look at.
Too Much Choice
Although it may seem counterintuitive, giving users limited choices when they visit your website may prove useful for prompting them take action. In the phenomenon known as decision paralysis, people tend to stall decision-making when they have too many options from which to choose. Having too many categories and subcategories on a page, too large a product/service selection, or too many types of social media “share” buttons can hurt your conversion rate.
Poor Text-to-Image Ratio
Focus on text more than visuals. Although the digital landscape is a very visual world, quality content is what will truly make your website design stand out. Design elements such as color are quite important, but they will not do much if the content is poor. This is not to say that you should neglect graphics. On the contrary, graphics are essential for making a page look interesting; but too many will only confuse and overwhelm a prospective customer. Too many images can also cause a page to load more slowly. Rather than bombard users with pictures and showy design, proper SEO website design aims to achieve a balance of quality images and text.
Ineffective Image Descriptions
If a developer overlooks the file names for their website’s images, you miss an opportunity to increase conversions. Search engines take any keywords in image descriptions into consideration when operating. Thus, by giving images concise, yet keyword-rich descriptions, you can increase your site traffic.
Using Flash
It’s a good idea to limit, if not outright eliminate the use of Flash in your SEO website design. Most agree that Flash is outdated, and harms, rather than helps, search engine visibility. Furthermore, it is often inaccessible to many users, which makes it massively detrimental to the usability of a website. Although most large companies have ceased to use the software, many small businesses still have it incorporated in their websites. The reality is that in 2017, there are many ways to make your website design interesting without resorting to using Flash. With new coding, such as HTML5, that can accomplish virtually all the same things Flash did and more, there is no reason to keep using the old software; to do so would very much akin to using a horse-drawn carriage on a road full of cars.
Strategic Media: St. Petersburg SEO Website Design
Creating user-focused, up-to-date, easy to navigate web pages can greatly improve your website’s ranking on search engines. SEO website design is a multifaceted, often complicated aspect of marketing one’s business. However, avoiding the mistakes listed above can be immensely helpful in efficiently achieving your desired result. Strategic Media, Inc. has SEO website design experts on staff to help your stunning website rank higher on search engines. Contact Strategic Media to get started or give them a call today at: 727-531-7622!