Top design mistakes that will destroy your website’s SEO

You just launched a website design full of stellar JavaScript navigation, a mind-blowing Java splash page, and fancy imagery

throughout the website.

Last month, you had an average of 10,000 visitors per week, and now you have only 100. What the heck happened?

Whether the site is for delivering daily news or selling fire protective clothing, it must perform well in search engines to be successful. After every redesign, it’s important to perform a site

audit to find design errors that might hurt your website’s SEO hosting.

A highly skilled designer can do brilliant things with a website’s design, but search engine optimization must be taken into consideration when shaping a new look. This

doesn’t mean you have to go back to the Stone Age designs of the ‘90s. Designers should work on a team with

wireframers, developers, and SEO specialists to create a website formula that will be eye-catching for both viewers and

search engines.

Unfortunately, most Web designers like to ignore SEO when building sites because they want to express their artistic

abilities. Below is an explanation of commonly made design mistakes that will ruin your SEO:

Using splash pages

Have you ever tried reading a book that sits on the opposite side of a brick wall? It’s just not going to work—and asking Google to read a website that hides behind a splash page is not much different. Your astonishing, psychedelic Java splash page may seem like the cool thing to do, but take my advice and don’t do it. The only thing you will accomplish with a splash page is to erect a massive barrier between your website and search engines.

The reason Java splash pages create a barrier is that search engines can’t read Java. You’re basically creating a home page with no content or navigation. This will cause the home page to be indexed improperly, stranding the rest of the website from proper indexation. If you absolutely must have a splash page, then add plenty of textual content and global navigation links in the body of the page. This is still a horrible idea, but at least it will give search engines something to read.

Building an all-Java site

Ever heard the saying, “It’s like talking to a brick wall?” If you build an all Java website, search engines will be talking to a brick wall when trying to find out more about your website. When I explained the horrors of a splash page, I mentioned that it creates a home page with no content or navigation. Imagine an entire site with no content, no internal linking, and no real navigation. Basically, you have a piece of art, not a website.

On top of being completely SEO hosting unfriendly, Java sites are annoying to use. Nobody wants to wait for pages to load. The worst Java sites are the ones where the applet is only 500×500 pixels—which seems to be a common trend with these types of sites.

Here are some words of advice if you still think a Java site is a good idea: If people and search engines can’t read the tiny, Java-embedded text, navigation links, and have to wait 30 seconds for each page to load, then you will end up with a dead website.

Using Frames

Unlike the Nike commercials, just don’t do it. Any smart designer will agree that frames are totally 1996. On top of being atrocious visually, frames will also make it extremely difficult for search engines to read your website. All that nicely written content you spent dozens of hours writing is now buried in the markup by the big, bad frame monster that wants to hide your content from Google.

Using images improperly

Do not use images as your primary form of navigation. Google will get caught up admiring the vibrant colors in the pictures instead of trying to figure out what they are supposed to mean. I’m not saying to use pure text links for navigation. That would be a sin against modern Web design.

Forgetting about breadcrumbs

While hiking in the woods, you forgot to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Now you are hopelessly lost and can’t find your way back home. Does this sound like your website? Breadcrumbs not only help make the website more user-friendly, but they also help search engines figure out the hierarchal navigation structure. They also reduce the need to overly expand the navigation bar with unnecessary categories.

Using images in place of content in headers

Going back to the section about using images properly, don’t replace content with images. Using cool graphics with text for headers may look awesome, but it will hurt your SEO hosting.

The purpose of using header text is to emphasize the importance of keywords in the content to search engines. If you don’t use proper h1 tags, you will be depreciating the value of your content. This brings me to my next point about not using header text at all.

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