Four Web Design Mistakes That Can Prevent a Front Page Listing

Getting targeted visitors to your site takes much more than creating something that’s visually appealing, choosing some keywords, and then waiting for the traffic to arrive. These four web design mistakes can either prevent people from finding your website or make them want to leave it immediately if they happen upon it. They are:

1) Assuming that keywords which will drive traffic are obvious – This is a common mistake that can waste a lot of time, effort, and money. Without extensive keyword research, choosing which keywords and phrases will hopefully drive traffic is pure guesswork. Usually those guesses end up being either too broad or too narrow, making any kind of SEO success close to impossible. Going too broad means that futile SEO efforts will be spent on a competitive an unfocused search segment. Imagine trying to get to the top of search rankings for a term like “clothes”. Go too narrow and there won’t be any traffic because no one is using those search terms. Keyword research can define a sweet spot of good traffic numbers combined with light competition making SEO success much more likely.

2) Putting an entry page on the site – These are usually flash based pages which visitors land on first. Visitors land and then have to watch some graphics while waiting for the “To enter, press here” button. These are precious seconds in terms of keeping a visitor on the site and a high percentage of them won’t wait and will quickly bounce off to another site.

3) Go with form over function – Flash may look great but visitors may not appreciate it (see #2) and the search engines don’t like it either. The dislike (it might be more like ambivalence) of the search engines comes from the fact that their spiders have a problem reading Flash. Regardless of its relevance, without input from the spiders the content is not going to be indexed.

4) Static content – Without fresh content, visitors are unlikely to return and search engines will ignore the site. Fresh quality content will keep both sides happy.

Avoiding these mistakes from the beginning on a new website or a redesign of an existing one will go a long way toward generating traffic and then keeping it on the site once it gets there. For a free consultation on getting your web design done correctly from the beginning, visit http://www.designsbyinet.com