Are You Making These Website Mistakes?

Unless you’re a web design professional, your website probably isn’t 100% technically “perfect”. That’s totally normal, because let’s be honest: you’ve probably got a million other things to focus on.

So we’re going to make it easy for you by sharing a few mistakes that many (if not most) people are making with their websites. All you need to do is check to see if you’ve made any, and apply our quick and easy solution to fix it so that your site runs smoothly, gives visitors a better experience and is easier for Google to understand.

Here are some of the most common mistakes our Mildura web design team sees on client websites:

Not Tracking Site Analytics

In order to track who visits your website, you need to have a Google Analytics property created for it, and the tracking code added to your site.

Without it, you have no way of monitoring your site traffic or seeing where your site visitors are coming from, which you really need for your marketing efforts.

Not sure if you have Google Analytics set up? Get in touch with our Mildura web design team.

Images That Are Too Large

Do you check how large your images are before you upload them to your website?

If not, definitely start doing so because large image files slow down your pages, and page experience is one of the things Google considers when ranking them. Images that appear too large on a webpage can also hurt the user experience.

What to do? Resize, resave (and rename) your images before uploading them. Aim for a few hundred KB or less per image, with width and height of 1200px or less.

Poorly Named Page URLs & Image Files

It’s too easy to leave page URLs and image filenames as whatever they default to when adding them to your website, but did you know that optimising these can help you show up in Google search?

To optimise image filenames:

• Delete the default filename (e.g. IMG_1234) and rename it something relative to the image or your desired keywords (e.g. new-home-builder-1 if you’re a construction company wanting to rank for the phrase “new home builder”)
• Ensure there are no spaces in the image filename (they will show up as weird characters in the image URL once you upload it); use dashes instead (e.g. new-home-builder.jpg rather than new home builder.jpg)

To optimise page URLs (for new pages; changing an existing page’s URL needs a redirect):

• Ensure there are no underscores (e.g. about_us)
• Ensure that words are separated by dashes, rather than bunched together (e.g. about-us rather than aboutus)
• Make them short and relevant (e.g. about or about-us, rather than about-our-customer-care-team)
• Incorporate a keyword if it makes sense to, but don’t keyword stuff.

Rock Solid Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Mildura that provides web design and SEO services. Contact us to learn more about setting your website up for search.