5 SEO Missteps Rookie Web Page Designers Always Make

When building a new website, many rookie designers focus entirely on aesthetics — colors, fonts, images, and layouts — while overlooking one of the most crucial aspects of a website’s success: search engine optimization (SEO).

A website that looks amazing but can’t be found on Google is like a beautifully designed storefront hidden in a back alley. Without proper SEO in place, you’re missing out on organic traffic, visibility, and ultimately, potential customers.

While SEO is a skill that can be learned, your business can avoid making a ton of mistakes by hiring a web design company offering SEO services for businesses. You can leverage the service provider’s experience and expertise to get better overall results.

What follows are five SEO blunders novice web designers make — and how to avoid them before they jeopardize your company’s website performance.

1. Page Load Speed Is Ignored

One of the oldest and worst SEO mistakes is neglecting to optimize page load times.

Newbie designers go all-out and build sites with large images, uncompressed video, bells-and-whistles scripts, and unnecessary plug-ins that slow them down. Site speed is something Google’s algorithm places a premium on. So, if your site takes an eternity to load, it won’t just frustrate people — it can harm your rankings.

You can avoid this mistake by, among other things, compressing images with tools like Squoosh or TinyPNG. And avoid bloated CSS and JavaScript.

2. Not Using SEO-Friendly URLs

Novice designers leave URL creation up to chance or allow the content management system to generate default URLs. These types of URLs communicate nothing to the search engines about the topic of the page.

SEO-friendly URLs enable search engines to index content properly. And clean, keyword-based URLs enhance click-through and communicate to users the content of the pages.

3. Not Using Meta Titles and Descriptions

Meta titles and descriptions are both SEO and user experience essentials. Junior designers miss filling them or auto-fill them.

You can correct this issue by including page-specific, keyword-rich meta titles, and titles should be 60 characters or less, with descriptions 160 characters or less.

4. Incorrect Use of Headers

Abusing or misusing header tags — H1, H2, and H3 for instance — is another common newbie mistake. They’ll include a hundred H1s on a single page, ignore header hierarchy, or use headers for styling instead of content organization. That confuses search engines and lowers the semantic value of the page.

Use one H1 per page with a primary keyword, and maintain hierarchical order and consistency with other headers.

5. Mobile Optimization Neglect

Don’t forget to optimize your website for use on smaller screens. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it’s crawling the mobile version of your website to rank by default. Your SEO performance will be based on your mobile website.

Remember that mobile usability directly affects rankings, so unoptimized mobile websites frustrate users and push them away.

You can fix this issue by implementing a responsive design to fit different screen sizes, testing mobile usability with tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, and creating touch targets big enough for touch screens.

Web design is not just about looks. A design that may be visually compelling but is not search engine-friendly or usable is useless. New web designers need to learn the basics of SEO before they can create successful and effective websites. While they can learn SEO skills on the job, you don’t want a newbie handling your SEO. Hiring a web design company offering SEO services to get the expertise needed.

Avoiding these five most common SEO errors can improve your site’s potential to rank higher, get more traffic, and turn consumers into customers.