Are you curious about why your website isn't performing well? It may be time for a redesign. Whether you're a corporate or small business, your company's website is the face you present to the world. Web technology is continually evolving. So, it's important to regularly evaluate your website to determine what's working and what's not.
Redesigning a website isn't just about enhancing its visual appeal, but it is also essential to create a design that captures the interest of search engines and incorporates all elements that boost website traffic. However, it will be challenging, and you must consider many factors to avoid any negative consequences.
Here we have listed some common website redesign mistakes to avoid that will hurt your SEO.
Common SEO Mistakes to avoid when Re-designing a Website
- Not implementing responsive design
- Complicated navigation
- Unclear call-to-action button
- Not having a proper content strategy
- Not having an internal linking strategy
- Changing URLs without proper redirects
- Failure to update the sitemap
- Slow load times
- Incorrect use of redirects
- Not using secure hosting
1. Not implementing responsive design
The majority of website visits now come from mobile devices, with more people accessing the internet via smartphones than desktops. Therefore, if you are considering website redesign, making your website responsive across all devices is important.
Without responsive design, websites struggle to display desktop-sized content on small mobile screens. That leads to overlapping columns, confusing navigation, and tiny text that makes the content difficult to read. Non-responsive website creates a frustrating and bad user experience. This often leads to high bounce rates as mobile visitors quickly leave the site. It also harms your SEO ranking as Google announced mobile-first indexing in 2016.
You have to give a smooth and seamless experience for mobile users by scaling down content. Make sure the buttons are easy to find and clickable, Use HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash, be sure the fonts are readable, Avoid pop-ups, and Use compressed images that will help you to make your website mobile-friendly.
2. Complicated Navigation
Effective website navigation serves as a guide for visitors, facilitating easy access to content on your website. The navigation of a website significantly influences the user experience. Complex navigation on your website can make it challenging for both Google and your intended audience to locate information.
Unfortunately, many website owners fail to recognize the importance of the website navigation. If visitors encounter challenges in navigating your website, they are likely to leave without exploring further, leading to an increase in bounce rate. Poor and unclear website navigation not only impacts traffic but also influences search engine rankings and conversions.
Therefore, it's essential to ensure that your website has user-friendly navigation, enabling both users and search engines to easily access the necessary information on your website.
3. Unclear call-to-action button
A Call-to-Action (CTA) button acts as a guide for directing potential customers toward the landing page that enables them to take desired action such as signing up, making a purchase, scheduling an appointment, downloading, or registering an event.
Due to unclear and unappealing CTAs businesses can miss the opportunities for engaging users. If your CTA buttons are seamlessly blended into the background and have uninspiring text such as "Submit" or "Click Here” that makes your potential customers feel frustrated. Those kinds of CTAs fail to motivate users to take action.
To enhance CTA buttons, designers should prioritize clarity and visual appeal. CTAs should be prominently displayed, contrasting with the background color, and should have compelling, action-oriented text. Use hover effects and distinct colors to make them clickable.
4. Not having a proper content strategy
While considering a website redesign, it's important to focus on fresh, compelling, and engaging content with all the required keywords. Over time, as new information emerges, your content becomes outdated and this results in a decline in the rankings of your best-performing pages. Therefore it’s important to refresh the old content of your existing pages. Do you know? According to a recent study, refreshing the website’s old content has the potential to boost organic traffic by up to 106%.
After conducting the initial analysis, prepare the list of the content pages that you want to retain. Create your content strategy according to your visitor’s behavior. Your content strategy should consist of industry news, trends, and technologies that are likely to captivate your target audience. Make sure that your content should be better compared to what it was in the past.
When designing your new website, pay attention to Google E-A-T and work on enhancing your website's score. E-A-T represents Expertise, Authority, and Trust; making sure your content encompasses these three fundamental categories can elevate your rankings.
5. Not having an internal linking strategy
Internal links refer to links that direct users from one page on your website to another. They are beneficial for helping users navigate your site and for enabling search engines to understand your site's structure and relevance. When considering a website redesign, it is important to update your internal links to align with the new site architecture and URL structure.
If your website lacks a well-planned internal linking strategy, search engines may struggle to properly index it, and this can lead to lower search engine rankings and reduced organic traffic. Internal linking allows search engines to assess page context and importance, with pages featuring more internal links considered more important.
Internal links play a vital role in enhancing the user experience, as they provide your audience with the opportunity to delve deeper into topics of interest. These links indicate to readers that there is additional relevant information available on your website, allowing them to access it directly from the page they are currently viewing if they require further clarification on the topic. This enables them to expand their knowledge on subjects of interest. If your website does not have a proper internal linking strategy, users also might face navigation challenges. To prevent a negative user experience, most of your pages should include internal links to other pages on your website to display connections and enhance the visitor's browsing experience.
