Web design mistakes that can reduce your traffic!
SEO isn’t just about title tags and link building, 
search engine optimisation should start as soon as you start building your website. Here are a few web design mistakes to avoid:
1) Using Flash
Avoid flash at all costs, whilst it can sometimes look great, it can severely hinder your seo as it will slow down your website’s loading time. Plus, Google simply cannot read it- and nor can those using apple products, which will bump up your bounce rate. If you want to rank highly in Google, avoid avoid avoid!
2) Image Labels
It’s surprising how much traffic is generated from image searches, it’s important to label your images appropriately in order to be found in image search and to influence your main Google rankings. Try and avoid nondescript labels such as ‘picture 1’, name them with the keywords you would like to be found for such as ‘Dentist Bournemouth’ for example
3) Too Many Links
Not only is this bad for the user, as there is too much choice for where to navigate, it also negatively effects your Page Rank. Page Rank determines how often Google will crawl your website, if you have too many links For players seeking to enjoy their roulette on line sessions, it is always best to practice for free before you play for real. on a page, you are spreading your PageRank too far and effectively diluting your efforts. Keep it simple with an uncluttered navigation.
4) Navigation
Make sure that your navigation isn’t made from an image so that Google can read it properly. It’s a good idea to use some of your keywords here, for example, if you really want to push dental implants in your practice, make sure there is a page for it in the navigation.
5) Text
If you have too little text on the page, Google will not have enough text to crawl and therefore will not be able to pick up your important keywords, as they’re just not there to be picked up!
In contrast, if you have too much text it can create a poor experience for the user- patients do not want to read essays! Furthermore, if you stuff your text with keywords, not only will the patient notice that it doesn’t make sense, Google will too and you could be subject to penalisation.
6) Fresh Content
Google loves fresh content and so do your patients. The more often you update your website, not only are you keeping your website interesting for the user, Google will crawl your website more often to see what’s new, which will result in higher rankings.
7) Up to date design
Whilst you may do you best to keep you website up to date and follow all of the tips mentioned, sometimes your website just needs a complete refresh. Old, tired looking websites do not look good for patients and will begin to decline in Google search. As a rule of thumb, websites have a shelf-life of around 3 years, unfortunately what may have worked then, may not be best practice any more.
If you would like more information about how web design affects your search engine rankings, give Dental Design a call on: 01202 677 277 and we’ll be happy to help you.
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