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Top 10 Web Design Mistakes
-Dyanna Culp
1.
Choosing a Loser Domain Name
- Urls
that do not reflect your company name or primary business.
- Words in
the URL do affect search engine ranking.
- No one
can remember excessively long urls and some engines (such as Yahoo) refuse to
accept them.
- Using
the same URL for each page in the site. This frustrates users trying to
bookmark a page and sabotages search engines trying to spider and list ALL of
your pages.
2. Poor
Choice of Content
- Web text
written for the search engines while forgetting about the human readers. Or
even worse, neglecting to consider either.
- Not
using those all important key words and phrases within the page text.
- Text
that goes on and on in book style. Break down the text into digestible
paragraphs, use bullets, keep it brief and to the point.
- Content
with no focus- a site that tries to cover everything, but nothing in depth,
will rank low with both users and engines.
-
Misspelled words on a site doom it to oblivion. Use spell check and then proof
read it over and over again. Do not rely on spell check to pick up grammar
mistakes.
- If you
can’t write, hire a professional web writer.
- Outdated
information- dead links and last year’s news make your site obsolete
3. No
Use, or Improper Use, of Tables
- Tables
keep those columns of images, text, figures etc. from aligning up unevenly in
people’s browsers.
- Tables
used improperly do not readjust themselves to fit in a variety of screen
sizes, resulting in the page being chopped off unless a user constantly
scrolls back and forth with the window arrows. Very irritating when trying to
read a webpage.
4. Too
much, too little Design Consideration
- Busy
backgrounds and exotic fonts can cause your message to be lost.
- Plain
white pages may bore a user to death
- Constant
Movement- scrolling marquees , animations etc. are nerve wracking to visitors
-
Dismaying are dark backgrounds with hard to read font colors on text heavy
pages.
- The
latest trend in tiny illegible font will make us all go blind.
-
Inconsistent use of fonts, color, and design throughout the site.
- Lack of
“space’ around text and images- everything is too crowded.
- Failure
to tie the look of the site to the image of the business/ individual it
represents.
5.
Excessive Graphics Use
- Slow
loading web pages lose much of their traffic as that little internet explorer
globe spins round and round trying to load the page
-
Developing a whole page as an image (such as adobe or Flash) means death to
search spiders.
- Not
optimizing image size to decrease load time.
-
Neglecting to use thumbnails where appropriate.
- Throwing
in excess images, especially animations, just to show off your graphics skills
or be “cute”.
6. Poor
Site Navigation –for Humans and Spiders
-
Using
graphics only (and no text) links within the site. This prevents search
engines from spidering the full site. They should be able to follow text links
to arrive at any and all pages within the site.
-
Drop down
menus may be the hottest new tool, but most users still don’t have a clue how
to use them.
-
Failure
to place a link back to the home page on every page in the site.
-
No
index or table of contents for the site.
7.
Building Pages with Frames
- Frames
are not indexed by many engines.
- Many
people don’t know how to use all of those arrows for moving about in frames
and even fewer know how to resize the individual frame windows.
- Most
framed sites are built for specific screen sizes. In different sized screens
the framed windows positioning can become distorted and some portions of the
page may not be viewable at all.
8. Java
Issues
- Trapping
your visitor so they cannot escape with the browser back button.
- Java
script and applets present significant problems to search engine spiders.
- Java
applets slow down your page load time.
-
Disabling right click does not stop anyone with web savvy from copying your
text or images. It does however irritate users wishing to copy and paste your
contact or product info.
9.
Cloaking, Hidden Web Text, and Redirects
- Cloaking
is a devious tool for manipulating search engine results with the inherent
risk of being permanently banned if caught. In addition it requires
considerable time and money compared to a non-cloaked site.
- Most
engines are onto the trick of hiding text within pages and penalize for it-
lowering your ranking.
-
Redirecting an old dead URL is fine, but filing a page with search engine
designed text and then using an immediate redirect to a site that does not
reflect the content of the original page is considered spamming by the search
engines.
10.
Considering SEO after the Site Design is Finished
- Not
utilizing image Alt tags
-
Neglecting the use of all site pages as possible doorways. Any content that
deserves to have its own webpage – deserves its own specific meta tags and a
hard look at the text for keyword inclusion.
- All
pages should offer the ability to travel to the home page through a spiderable
text link.
- Using
broad generic keywords in meta tags and page text. Be specific! Think Ad Copy!
- Writing
the meta tags for the search engines with boring text that ranks high but no
one wants to click on.
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Submitting to the engines after signing up with every Free for all links
program online.
-
Submitting to the engines before establishing external links. The type and
number of sites linking to you affects ranking. Google and Hotbot place a
strong emphasis on external links.
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