10 Mistakes in Web Design that affect SEO the most

What web design mistakes affect SEO the most?

After knowing the benefits of combining web design and SEO and understanding the pillars of this combination, discover the 10 web design mistakes that can ruin your brand's position in search rankings.

1. Forget to compress images

Quality images are undoubtedly an important part of good design. However, if they have a very high resolution, they can affect the loading speed of your site.

The user will hardly have the patience to wait for a page to open if it takes more than a few seconds, even more so if accessed from a mobile device. Therefore, for Google, the loading speed of a site is a ranking factor.

Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the size (in terms of dimensions and megabytes) of your images so that it does not slow down your web pages. Always try to use an image compression tool before adding them to the website.

Take a look at TinyPNG. In this example, you were able to compress an image by 75%!

2. Post poor quality content

Although content is not always associated with design and development, we must remember that there are aesthetic aspects that can make it difficult for the user to engage with it. Very large paragraphs and sentences, very small font and a text color that makes it difficult to read are elements that search engines are capable of detecting.

Notice in the image below how the words are the same.

See how very large blocks of text, entire paragraphs in all caps, and color without adequate contrast make the experience much worse.

3. Add too many JavaScript calls

The web is full of scripts that help enhance websites with more dynamic elements or by incorporating media from other services with the embed feature. The problem is that requesting too many external resources can slow downloading, which we already know is bad for both user experience and SEO.

With that in mind, when doing web development, use third-party script calls sparingly. Analyze if they are essential, or if it is possible to use other solutions.

see the case of this blog: of the 2.4 megabytes transferred, 654 kilos correspond to JavaScript, which is about 26% of the data transferred when loading this particular page.

4. Create a significant part of the site in Flash

It is true that Flash can create incredible effects on your website, but it is worth remembering that the user needs to have Adobe Flash Player installed on the device in order to view it.

Also, search engines do not index the content created using this technology very well.

Thus, it is ideal to avoid the use of Flash for navigation and text content, or simply opt for other alternatives that follow Web standards.

5. Ignore mobile users

We've already discussed the significant increase in connections via tablets and smartphones, which means the majority of your site visitors are likely to come from these devices.

If your pages are not prepared for these devices, it is almost certain that your visitors will leave your site.

Since search engines consider whether the site is mobile-friendly or not to define its ranking, it is worth investing in a responsive design from an SEO aspect as well.

And speaking of mobile, don't forget to add some social sharing buttons to your page!

6. Replace important HTML elements with images

Creating stunning images and using them in place of important HTML elements like header tags may look great, but it won't work for SEO.

The H1, H2 and H3 tags highlight the degree of relevance of each part of your SEO content and allow you to put more emphasis on the keyword on that page.

7. Add lots of text to images

We've already explained that search engines can't interpret images the same way they can analyze textual content—which is part of the page's HTML code.

For this reason, it is bad practice to have images that consist primarily of text instead of reproducing it with actual text elements on the page.

While the alt text attribute can be useful in these cases, it's great for creating supplemental text or keeping an image and text separate. An alternative would be to create a text overlay using CSS functions.

8. Create overly sophisticated menus

We already know how navigation is relevant to users and search engines. So, nothing better than creating simple menus that follow the pattern that is already expected of these elements on the Web —an unordered list vertically or horizontally, for example.

Navigation should be organized and should not create confusion for your buyer persona. To avoid this, keep a balance. Work on the quality of your menu presentation, but avoid being too innovative.

9. Using features that make content difficult to access

When the user arrives at your site through a search tool like Google, the idea is that they find what they are looking for, right? If we position pop-ups, ads, news and other elements to the main content, we hinder that access.

Take the news site in the image below as an example. Notice how, when opening the main page, the space dedicated to the information that the reader really wants to see is very small.

Search engines are smart enough to detect this type of item, which negatively affects rankings.

10. Ignore tests and results

The best way to know if your web design is negatively influencing search engine optimization is to run tests and evaluate the results.

An interesting measure is to include annotations in your analytics platform. Every time there are significant changes to the site design, record the date and check if there have been significant changes in organic traffic.

It's important to remember that a drop in visitor acquisition through organic search may be due to other reasons, such as server issues or even changes to Google's search algorithm.