Top 5 Web Design Mistakes That Could Potentially Kill Your SEO
As an established web design agency we certainly know a thing or two about creating unforgettable web platforms. A pretty looking website however isn’t the only thing that will impress would-be and existing customers. Without the right level of functionality your website will quickly fall into the abyss. Your competitors will be ready and waiting to scoop up the customers you’ve lost due to poor user experience, claiming them as their own. The search engine optimisation of your website is another important factor, and the design of your site can have a major impact in this area also.
Read on to discover the top 5 web design mistakes that could kill your site’s SEO, and ensure your online business never falls victim to them again.
- Redesigning without the right redirects
Having your website redesigned is an exciting time for any brand, but you shouldn’t forget the website and associated pages that you’re leaving behind.
Your new website’s search engine optimisation will suffer if you don’t follow the very basic redirect rules that should accompany every redesign. Pages that have to be changed or moved must use 301 redirects to direct users from the old page to the new. Simply deleting pages could mean any SEO value that was held in your old site is lost forever.
- Failing to check links after each migration
The migration of a website should be a relatively smooth process, whether you are moving the site to a development area for the redesign or moving the redesigned website back to the live server. In their haste however many can forget to check links after each migration. A full crawl should be performed after every migration to identify links that are pointing to the wrong pages. Failing to identify even the smallest and most insignificant link could cause wider problems for your new website.
- Not checking the full site and its functionality
Checking just a few pages and seeing how they perform just won’t cut it following a full redesign. A full function check should be undertaken to ensure every last bit of your website functions as it should do. Analytics and Webmaster Tools should also be checked at this stage to guarantee great working order as soon as your new site goes live.
- Not bothering to reconfigure WordPress and its plugins
If like many business owners you’ve chosen to embrace the ease and accessibility of a WordPress site as part of your redesign, ensuring that the framework and all the plugins your website may use are correctly reconfigured is important. Failure to reconfigure WordPress and its plugins could mean that search engines overlook your website and don’t crawl or index pages properly when you go live.
- Changing well-ranking features without thought
The redesign process may see pages undergo just a few tweaks to ensure they perform better, but what happens if well-ranking pages suffer a change too many? Web designers must exercise caution when altering elements on well-ranking pages, a fact that makes a good understanding of SEO apart of the job description.
Need help with the redesign of your website? Make sure your website looks good and ranks even better by contacting our web designers today.
