How to avoid the classic SEO web design faux pas

There are few things that are certain in life, but something that will always be the case is that web developers and SEO experts rarely agree.

While the two should be working uniformly to drive more traffic, and a better user experience to a website, there are major issues that can get in the way of this.

For example, while web developers might be creating sites based on the latest browser technology, to ultimately give users the best experience possible, this doesn’t always play into the hands of an SEO company. This is because while users might be able to use Chrome 74 on standard web browsing, Googlebot (the bot that powers Google Search) is still limited to Chrome 41. Ultimately, there are major differences to how these browsers function – and this means that some of the latest tech just can’t be understood by a search engine.

However, while technology discrepancies can be almost allowed for, there are certain no-go areas when it comes to web design and SEO. Let’s now take a look at these in-detail.

The one-page website

This is one of those styles that some website designers won’t sway away from, but for the purposes of SEO it is a definite no-go.

Sure, one-page websites might condense everything nicely into one page, but it comes at a cost. Suddenly, it becomes difficult to target individual keywords, while a side effect is that you are unlikely to be able to build content around your topic. For example, some brands will build a blog to drive relevancy signals to their site, but if your business just uses one page this is of course very difficult.

Using images instead of text

This next point is probably the biggest sin we will cover. Sure, you might be able to use a whole variety of fonts if you opt for this approach, but nowadays this isn’t an excuse anyway. After all, you can preload custom fonts in a script, albeit at the cost of losing some speed.

If you do decide to use your text as images, Google has no idea what your site is about. All of the text is embedded into images, which they can’t read. It’s the easiest way not to rank in the world’s biggest search engine.

Using popups upon entry to a site

This might be more of a conversion rate disagreement with SEO experts, but web developers will have a say as well.

There was a phase of websites presenting all types of popups to users, in a bid to get them to buy or subscribe to their relevant service. It was annoying, but unfortunately it generally tended to work.

Over recent times, Google has taken a firm stance on this. They announced that sites providing a popup upon entry on mobile can be subjected to a penalty, as it doesn’t provide a satisfactory user experience. As such, by engaging in such a practice, you are immediately hindering your chances of ranking again.