Just like a writer or filmmaker aiming to captivate both their audience and critics, a web designer also faces two challenges: users on one side, and search engines on the other. This duality necessitates balancing aesthetics – without losing sight of usability – and the rules set by search engines. This is why launching a new website or redesigning an existing one is a complex task for many companies, as a significant volume of traffic and web visibility can be lost if either area is neglected. While this depends on various factors, one of the most common causes is web design errors.
Unfortunately, these are easy to fall into, as optimising a website for search engines often means sidelining aesthetic considerations. And vice-versa: a site designed solely to ensure a perfect user experience (UX) will hardly please Google (or at least, not as much as the company would like).
To help you avoid them, we summarise what the portal SearchEngineJournal considers the most common web design errors that can hinder your website's SEO ranking.
Not Including the H1 Tag
Who can resist a page with an original, dynamic design, full of surprising resources and easy to use? The answer is simple: search engines. And if they don't rank them well in their search results, very few people will access the site. The reason? In many cases, the absence of the H1 tag, which is often sacrificed due to lack of space.
Although many designers readily omit it, this is one of the most significant SEO errors they can make. In fact, even though it doesn't appear in the content, this element is not only used to title the page, but also appears in the navigation tab and in search results. Furthermore, this heading tag serves to create a unique title for each web page.
And that's not all: the H1 tag is one of the first elements that search engine crawlers will analyse to determine what the page is about. Therefore, incorporating this tag will improve your chances of achieving a good search engine ranking.
However, for this element to be effective, it must be between 40 and 70 characters long, contain the keywords you want to rank for, and never be duplicated. Also, remember that characters further to the left have a greater impact from an SEO perspective.
Opting for Overly Short Texts
We cannot stress this enough: for Google, website quality is non-negotiable. And one of the aspects it considers when evaluating this variable is text length.
Although there are no exact figures, a minimum length of 300 to 350 words is generally considered appropriate. In any case, if you want search engines to give it even more weight, the text should ideally be at least 900 or 1,000 words.
Furthermore, it is advisable to prioritise including text on product and service pages, as Google considers these the most important.
Of course, many other considerations ensure texts rank well. To learn more, we invite you to read this article on how to create an effective SEO content strategy.
Not Optimising Images and Multimedia Files
Did you know that 90% of the information transmitted to our brain is visual? Or that it processes visual information much faster than text? For this reason, it should not surprise us that incorporating photos or videos on a website increases the probability of receiving visits by up to 20%.
However, while this resource gives our website an unbeatable appearance, it is also true that if not used properly, it can ruin your ranking strategy.
One of the most recurring problems is the inclusion of excessively large photos or videos, which can negatively affect loading speed, a parameter Google considers when ranking its search results. In contrast, the Palo Alto giant rewards pages that open quickly.
To easily detect if a page loads within an appropriate time – no more than 2 seconds, according to Google's criteria – you can use Google PageSpeed Insights Test or Screaming Frog, two applications that instantly indicate if the size of the images is excessive.
Once problematic images are identified, you must resize or compress them and re-upload them to the website.
Furthermore, do not forget that both the file name and the anchor text of images should ideally include a keyword related to their content. The photo should also be placed near related text, and the ALT attribute (a description that appears when hovering over the image) should be included.
Adding Text in Image Format
Although it may be hard to believe, many web designers choose to include text in image format, either to save space or to achieve a more striking appearance. This is a misguided decision because, currently, search engines cannot interpret the vast majority of images. Therefore, this is equivalent to not including text, as Google cannot read the message within images.
To this inconvenience, another no less relevant point must be added: the lack of readability on mobile devices, as images are reduced when accessed via this route. When this happens, the result is an increased probability of a higher bounce rate, as the user, unable to read the text properly, is more likely to leave the page. This is something Google negatively evaluates when offering its ranking results.
For this reason, we strongly advise against this practice.
Incorporating Pop-ups
Google recently warned against including pop-up windows. The reason is that, being a type of intrusive advertising, they negatively affect the user experience, an aspect that is sacred to Google. Thus, if pop-ups appear before your visitors can access the main content
