Search-engine optimization or SEO is the most important element of online design. Essentially, it ensures that your website ranks highly in search engines and makes them easier to find. Integrating these concepts into your content creation – and website designs – are critical when hiring the best Cedar Rapids website designer.
However, it is very easy to integrate concepts or ideas that seem smart on the surface but which devastate your SEO. Most SEO experts will warn you away from these design concepts but will ultimately implement them if you demand them. Avoid these concepts as much as possible to get the best results from your website design.
Poor Content Creation
In the past, low-quality content that was crammed with keywords attracted the attention of most search engines. However, sites like Bing, Google, and DuckDuckGoose now have algorithms that avoid this type of content. Instead, they will reward websites that have high-quality and unique content that is written as well as possible.
As a result, you can’t stuff your website with duplicate content that reads awkwardly but which catches search engine attention. Beyond that, you also need to tweak your domain and sub-domain names to ensure that they aren’t duplicating any content or concepts. Failure to do so will make your website fall far down the SEO list.
Excessive Keyword Usage
Yes, using keywords is important in website design. You need to attract the attention of search engines and find common keywords that your customers will actually use. However, excessive keyword use – often called cannibalization – will penalize your site because it won’t provide the kind of high-quality content that search engines desire.
For example, if you are a shoe business in New York City, you might be tempted to use keywords like “shoe store in New York City, New York City shoe store, best shoe store in NYC,” etc. However, search engine algorithms have become very good at spotting this kind of keyword cannibalization and will penalize you for attempting such an obvious tactic.
Poor Webpage Indexing
The concept of website indexing is likely confusing to the average business owner. Essentially, it indicates whether or not your websites are checked as searchable by search engines. You might think that you can just index all of your pages and get results. That’s an understandable idea but one that is very wrong. Indexing and ranking simply doesn’t work like that.
Very small technical problems often cause high-quality websites to fail to index or rank. For example, a poorly edited robots.txt file can cause a website to fail to rank. This error can be as small as a single “/” placed in the wrong spot. You may also have a site setup not to index, which occurs if you didn’t change the options to allow indexing to occur. These technical steps are hard to understand and require a professional to do properly.
Don’t Let These Mistakes Impact You!
As you can see, SEO mistakes are often caused by good intentions by people who make them. However, they will destroy your website’s credibility, cause it to fall in website rankings, and put you in a very tough position. You’ll need a high-quality Cedar Rapids website designer to avoid these common issues and to keep your website in a good position.
So don’t hesitate to contact a design who can provide you with the best SEO concepts for your site. And make sure that you trust their instincts and don’t force them to do anything that may impact your website. These professionals have decades of experience working with website design and will work hard to ensure that you get the best website possible.