Are you making these common website mistakes? These can be seriously hurting your ranking, traffic, engagement and conversions. Learn what they are and how to fix them.
Not SEO Optimized
Having a website that is not SEO optimized, is like having an amazing burger that you cannot eat. That's because customers will have a very hard time finding you organically (meaning using Google search or any other search engine), unless you give them them the direct link. Because the web has millions of webpages and the competition is high, you are probably noticing you have no traffic, engagement or conversions.
Issues that effect on-page SEO include:
Title tag
Alt-tags
Meta-Descriptions
Headings
Word Counts
URLS
SSL Certificates
Redirects
Links
Just to name a few. How can you fix this? If you are not versed in SEO, your best bet is to hire a digital marketer, SEO expert or web developer to help. Getting a Website Audit will help identify the issues for you.
Not Mobile-Friendly
Nowadays, everyone uses their mobile phone to browse websites. In March 2021 54.25% of users used mobile phones and 42.9% used desktop. That means it is so imperative your webpage be responsive (meaning it sizes depending on the screen size the viewer is using). If your site is not mobile-friendly, visitors will drop off almost immediately. Making your website easy to navigate on desktop and on mobile is super important to keeping visitors on your site and getting them to convert. You can check if your website is mobile-friendly using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool by Google.
No NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number)
Listing your Company Name, Address and Phone Number are critical to create credibility to not only your visitors (that you are a legitimate business or person), but also to search engines who want to rank you for geo-targeted searches. You should also ensure you are registered with Google My Business for the same reason.
Slow Page-Loading Speed
User experience can be negatively affected if they have to wait too long for your website to load and will result in bounces and less time on pages. In addition, Google has made page speeds something their algorithm ranks for, so it's important to ensure your site isn't loading too slowly. Some factors that can affect speed are, large files, images, videos and redirects, more are listed here.
Test your page load speed with Google PageSpeed Insights.
Low Quality Images
Making your website stand out means using high-quality images. There are plenty of resources to download images such as:
When uploading images, use JPEG (JPG) or a PNG ensuring you compress your images to smaller sizes so that they don't have a long load speed.
No CTAs (Call-To-Actions)
Once you get that click and someone lands on your website, you've accomplished quite a bit already. But converting a visitor on your website can be just as hard. You have to make it fool proof, to compete with short attention spans and other distractions your visitor may have. Make it absolutely clear what it is you want your visitors to do. The way you do this, is by having clear Call To Actions in the form of buttons or text that stand out and that are clear action words. Here are some common CTAs that work.
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No Blog
You may think blogs are a thing of the past, but actually a blog is one of the best and more stable ways to show up in search engines and at the same time bring awareness, educate or entertain your visitors. Google's algorithm changes frequently when once favored short-form content, now favors long-form content of 1500 words or more. So ultimately, blogging is time-consuming but will help you rank higher on Google if you are committed. In addition, you can monetize on your well-ranked blog with affiliate marketing, which makes it attractive to many entrepreneurs.
Long Videos
Video content is king, however even though YouTube thrives off long video formats, short videos or "shorts" are increasingly popular with Tik Tok breaking into the market, and recently YouTube "Shorts". It's not surprising since human's attention spans are short that the ideal video length is under 2 minutes. Especially, if you are trying to convert someone once they get to your site, welcoming them with a long video, means it will take them longer to click on your call to action and convert.