We can all agree that having an effective website is a key tool for any organisation. So keep ahead of the game by ensuring you are not making some of common mistakes:
- Lengthy page titles. Aim to keep titles under 70 characters. This ensures that visitors searching on a browser see all the title, makes you concentrate on writing something that will attract the viewer immediately and uses keywords that people may be looking for. However:
- Avoid keyword stuffing. The search engine algorithms are wise to this. They prioritise user experience and having content which uses keywords in a cumbersome or inappropriate way will create a poor user experience
- More than one page targeting the same keyword. If you do this, then the pages will compete against each other in searches.
- Overly long meta descriptions. This is the text that appears under a page title in a browser search. If they are too long, they will be cut off by the search engine.
- Not enough or too much text. Search engines scan for text. Several things flow from this. First they cannot read images so you need to add alternative text to any graphics. This will also make your content more accessible too. Secondly search engines – and viewers – find it difficult to focus if there is too much text.
- Not reviewing how pages are performing. It is easy, particularly in smaller organisations, not to look at how your content is performing. Are there some pages which are not being visited at all or very seldom? How important are those pages to you? Google Analytics can help you with this as can many of the social media schedulers such as HubSpot.
- Slow load times. Are you checking regularly that your website is loading quickly? Poor load times affect SEO and are irritating to visitors. There are various tools that can help you measure this including Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Not making your website responsive. These days it is essential that your website functions not only on a desktop but on mobile phones/laptops/ipads etc. If you are not sure how well you are doing, start by using the Google Search Console to test pages.
- Not considering internal linking. Internal links are important but you also don’t want to have too many. Run an audit to identify what you are currently linking and whether you need to make changes, create more links etc. Don’t forget to check regularly for broken links too as these affect SEO.
- Cumbersome website forms. People will not fill in lengthy forms! Make it easy for them and try to limit all forms to a maximum of 5 fields.
- Absence of calls to action. We all know that we should put a call to action on a page promoting a newsletter but are you using them on other pages? And do they appear above the fold so they are seen when someone lands on a page?
- Hidden contact details. Why do so many legal organisations hide their contact details? Ideally they should appear on every page either in the header or in a call to action. Make it easy for someone to get in touch.
- Using too many stock images. We all make use of stock images but there is a danger of looking like the competition. Mix them up with original images and graphics. And take time to look for the more unusual stock images.
Best practice
The mistakes mentioned above are easily corrected if you set up a regular review process. Your website provider is an obvious port of call to help you with this.