Everyone wants their website to look good and be easy to manage. There are plenty of adverts around at the moment for things that claim to do just that – Wix, GoDaddy, etc – but the easiest solution isn’t always the best solution.
Over the years, I have had several clients coming to me for a new website, after having previously tried to create one themselves using a variety of cheap online tools. Whilst these tools are fine for creating a basic website, my clients wanted something more than the basics. They either wanted improved design options, greater control over the layout or the ability to better optimise their site for search engines.
Top 5 biggest mistakes of DIY websites
- Not properly optimised for search engines.
- Not making use of image filenames for SEO.
- Missing CTAs.
- Not mobile friendly.
- Just doesn’t look professional.
#1 Search Engine Optimisation
Let’s get the big one out of the way first: search engine optimisation is vital for your website. After all, if no-one can find your website, it doesn’t matter how lovely it is.
A lot of DIY solutions make it easy to insert text into a web page, but the way that this text is converted into code is very important. At first glance, it may not be obvious whether it’s been done in a way that is most efficient for search engines to read.
The titles and headings of your website may look fine in the editor – correct size, nicely spaced out – but unless you have used the correct heading tags, your SEO potential may suffer.
You should always have one “Heading 1” (or H1 tag) on every page – this should include the main keywords that you want that page to rank for. Then you should use “Heading 2” (or H2) for the main sub-headings and “Heading 3” (or H3) for any sub-sections within that. Each of these headings should ideally contain content that is a) relevant to the section it is describing (for the benefit of your visitors); and b) inclusive of your desired SEO keywords or phrases.
To check if your website is lacking in this area, view your website in a browser and select “View Source” from the menus. Search the content of that code for “h1”, “h2” and “h3″… and see what comes up. Do each of them appear? Is the content of those headings relevant?
Other basic things you need to look out for:
- Page titles – the text that appears in the browser tab, and also forms the link text in search engines.
- Meta descriptions – the introduction text that appears under the main link in search engines.
- Body text – you also need to include your keywords in the body copy of your web pages.
…but don’t overdo it. Trying to “cheat the system” by using keywords too often, to the point that the actual content starts to make less sense to the people reading it, is known as keyword “stuffing”… and will do more harm than good to your search rank.
#2 Image Filenames = Free SEO
“A picture is worth a thousand words”… but DSC0018.jpg tells us absolutely nothing!
Being able to easily upload photos is great, but done without much thought and you may be missing out on free SEO. Give your images a meaningful filename before uploading them. This gives your web page more relevant SEO terms for search engines to index and also makes it easier for them to appear in Google image search.
Making use of image filenames for SEO is also a good opportunity to use some long-tail keywords. An example of a short-tail keyword would be something like “website design”, whereas a long-tail keyword might be “bespoke wordpress website design”. It is helpful to use both when fine-tuning your content, but shorter ones are often easier to fit into the flow of a sentence. Image filenames and “alt” text is a good way of squeezing in a few longer ones.
#3 Missing Call-to-Actions
Every page on your website should have a purpose. If it’s a product page, you want your customers to make a purchase – if it’s an information page, you might want them to contact you or subscribe to a newsletter. A call-to-action (or CTA) is an important ingredient in that process.
Take any page on your website. Look at it and think “what is the purpose of this page?”
When you have figured that one out, ask yourself “how easy is it for my website visitor to complete that purpose?”
It’s possible that most pages on your site could be better focused towards achieving your goals.
#4 Not Mobile Friendly
With an increasingly high percentage of people choosing to use their mobile device to search for and visit your website, it is more vital than ever that your website is mobile friendly.
Your website should be responsive to browser size. The design and layout should adapt to the size of the device that it is being viewed on, giving the individual user the best possible experience of your website.
Of course, your website should look great on a standard desktop computer, but if the same attention to detail hasn’t been applied to the mobile version… then mobile users will have a lesser experience. The site could be harder to use, resulting in fewer sales or enquiries.
#5 Doesn’t look professional
Your website is your shop window to the online world. If it doesn’t look great and work well, then it could leave potential customers with a negative impression of your business. Not ideal.
A well-defined bespoke website can take care of the design and layout for you, making it harder to adversely effect the design of your website. Some of the DIY solutions available often give a little too much flexibility over the design and layout.
If all you generally need is the ability edit the content without fear of breaking something, a proper CMS is what you need – not a “one size fits all” DIY website builder.
And how to fix them
#1 Visit your website, right-click and select “View Page Source”. Search for H1, <title>, and meta name=”description“ – each of these should be present and contain some of your SEO keywords.
#2 Before uploading, change image filenames to something meaningful to the page content and inclusive of keywords.
#3 Look at one of your main webpages and think “what is the purpose of this page?” Give the user an opportunity to action this purpose, whether that be to get in touch with you or to purchase one of your products. If the page is fairly short, once at the bottom should be fine. If the page is long or has a lot of content, try to also including these call-to-actions partway through the page.
#4 View your website on a phone or mobile device. Check for things that look correct on desktop but not mobile. Maybe the layout isn’t quite right, or maybe the navigation doesn’t work quite as well.
#5 Look critically for things that aren’t aligned, too many font sizes, not clear what the focus of the page is, or things that just don’t look good – or worse – don’t look as good as your competitor’s websites.
Need help?
If you need help with any of the above, please let me know… I’m here to help.