Website Design Mistakes

By Jessica O'Neal

When any business sets out to have a website designed and built, a primary focus is the look of the site. After all we all want a professional looking, impressive site that reflects our brand well, and something we can ‘show off' to our clients and potential clients.

However, if you only consider the look of a site and not how it will perform on the search engines, then you may be missing out! We always say that having a web presence isn't enough, you need a search engine presence, and by having a search engine friendly site you are ready to get the most out of any SEO campaign you undertake.

So what are the common mistakes?

1. Sites built in flash Often people choose flash as it can have an eye catching and effective look. However by having a flash site you are effectively ‘hiding' your site's content from the search engines. Search engines cannot read any of the copy on a flash site and so even if what a user can see is full of keyword rich content it means nothing in terms of search engines.

2. Sites built in frames Like with flash sites, sites built in frames again ‘hide' the content from the search engines. When a search engine ‘bot' gets to the site, it is unable to crawl the content as it can't see it: therefore meaning it isn't processed by the search engines.

3. Embedding Text In Images Although images can look great and really lift the visual appeal of a site, beware of showing text in the form of an image. This is particularly common in logos and navigation, where there may be relevant keywords which are not actual text, but part of an image, and so cannot be read by the search engines.

4. Domain names that aren't SEO friendly Often the most obvious choice for a URL is a business' name, but by including only this you are missing out on further enhancing your SEO campaign. By including a main keyword/keywords in the URL, you will improve your ranking for that keyword and be on a strong foundation for your ongoing SEO efforts for that keyword.

5. Meta refresh redirects Often you may need to have redirects in your site, for instance when you no longer offer a service/product and would like to point a user elsewhere. But be careful which method you or your developer use as many of the commonly used methods for re-directing are not search engine friendly.

If your site features any of these mistakes and you are looking for a low cost web design solution, then Web Sight by Prodo can help. We specialise in cheap web design, which maximises SEO potential, and ongoing SEO so you can get on Google.

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