Your website is a key part of your business. It’s how potential customers find you, learn about you and get in touch with you. If your website isn’t optimised, you’re literally throwing money out the window! If you’re making these mistakes not only are you not getting found on Google, if you DO get found, you won’t convert. So what are the mistakes? 

Unclear messaging.

Your website should immediately tell customers exactly who you are, what you do and how you can help them.

This sounds obvious, but it’s fascinating how many people have an unclear message, and visitors are trying to figure out if they are in the right place.

On top of having a clear message, you also want to have consistent branding across all of your marketing accounts. 

No mobile optimisation.

This is an absolute deal-breaker! 80% of your traffic will now come from mobile, and you cannot afford to not have a mobile optimised site.

Not only is it really annoying for a visitor to use, you will get penalised from Google if your website isn’t mobile optimised.

Simply visit your website from a phone and see how it’s laid out, and work on this ASAP. 

Slow loading speed.

If your website takes more than 3 second to load, it will annoy visitors and also get penalised from Google.

If you want to test the speed of your website, check out GT Metrix and make all the tweaks necessary.

The first thing I would check is the size of your images - if you have large images they take longer for the site to load, and as such…. slow website! 

Incomplete page titles and descriptions.

This one’s for our friend Google. When someone types in a phrase into Google, it’s goal is to find the most relevant website based. If your home page is just titled ‘home’ it’s not telling Google about your site! 

For example, my website’s home page title isn’t ‘Home’ it’s called “Mastered Marketing - Social Media & Digital Marketing Experts”.

Have a descriptive page title that’s 60 - 70 characters long, and then a page description that’s 150 - 160 characters long. Make the most of it and use keywords to tell Google about your site. 

No SSL certificate.

SSL certificates are important for any website - they provide authentication to any website and protection to users’ private information.

If your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, visitors would not feel secure in your website, which may lead them to not visiting it ever again.

In many cases visitors can get a warning saying "This website could be trying to steal your personal information". Even if you aren't - that's a very off-putting message to get! 

No clear call to action.

Even if you have a good-looking website, you won’t get enough leads if you don’t have a clear call to action (CTA).  

Think about the #1 thing you want people to do on your website, and how it fits in their reason why they went to your website and push them towards that.

Have big call to action buttons in a contrasting colour that stand out. Once you figured out the right CTA, you should ensure that the destination is well-designed, usable, and delivers exactly what was promised to the visitors.

Clumsy navigation.

Make the information visitors need easy to find. Don’t hide important content within folders, or give pages strange titles that aren’t very clear.

Delete irrelevant pages otherwise you’re just making it more confusing for people. Make the Also, make sure your search bar is easy to find. 

Showing too much at once.

Make every page accessible from the home page, but don’t slam them with everything at once. If I only want one service, I don’t want to have to sift through information to find it, or be bombarded with irrelevant content! 

The first thing a visitor would if they’re bombarded by irrelevant content is to exit the website. 

Broken links and technical issues.

Broken links can harm your website - and therefore, your business - in two ways: it makes a bad user experience, and it also reduces your SEO efforts, which will lower your website’s position in search engines.

Make sure that all links are working by checking the website at least once a month. You can get a free SEO site audit at SEMrush. 

Dead weight pages

Dead weight pages are low quality content in your website which could also lower your ranking in search engines.

AN example is outdated content. You can update the content of your website and beef them up with information so they could stay relevant and timely.

It’s better if you do a content audit to see the low quality content on your website. Tools like Google Analytics and Screaming Frog can help you with that. 

No sitemap.

A sitemap is the blueprint of your website, which makes it easier for search engines like Google to find your site’s pages. Fun fact: Google not only ranks your website, it also ranks its pages!

That’s why it’s important for your website to have a sitemap, for search engines to easily find and raises the chance for it to rank high and be easily visible to visitors.

Submit your website to Google's Search Console to make sure Google is showing visitors the right thing.

Your website is most likely the first thing your customers will see. If it’s not easy to use and not attractive enough, maybe it’s also the last thing the customer will see of your business. So make sure that it’s in its best condition! If you're looking for a schmick new website, we make beautifully modern and seamlessly functional websites. Get in touch here for a free quote!

MITCH HILLS @mitchills