Your website might seem like the perfect place for people to find information about your business and contact details, but it could be negatively affecting your business instead. Websites can be powerful marketing tools but they can also have a negative impact on businesses if users aren’t aware of the repercussions. Many small factors can make up an unappealing experience for visitors, resulting in fewer return visitors and a lower conversion rate. Although there are obviously positives to having a website such as blogs or digital magazines that allow you to share interesting facts about your company, rest assured if you think your site is hurting you then there’s probably something else at play too. Let’s take a look at some of the ways your website might be hurting you as a business without you even realizing it.
Your Website Isn’t Mobile-Friendly
There is a significant amount of traffic coming from mobile devices. In fact, in the United States, 76 percent of all internet traffic is generated from mobile devices. This means that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile users then you might be missing out on a great opportunity to convert new visitors into customers. Your website should have an easy-to-navigate structure and a clean layout so that it looks good on any size screen. It should also have features that make it easier for people to find what they need quickly. This will help you get more clicks and conversions, increase your bounce rate and close rates, and lower your time on site. Your Website Isn’t Mobile-Friendly Your website is making it difficult to use analytics Most websites use analytics tools to track their marketing efforts, but if these tools are hard to access or difficult to understand then it might be hurting your business instead of helping it. What’s the point of tracking your marketing if the numbers don’t make sense? For example, if 50 percent of visitors are leaving because they couldn’t find what they were looking for on your site after 10 minutes, there’s something wrong with the site itself! When people can’t easily use analytics and see results right away then they’ll go elsewhere instead.
You Have Incorrect Headlines or Other Content
You might be putting out content that’s unappealing to visitors and your conversion rate will suffer as a result. The first thing you should look at is the title of your website and how visitors are interacting with it. If you have titles such as “Hello, I’m Howie” or “Our Services,” it’s going to be hard for people to find what they need on your site. You also have to think about the content on your site and whether or not it’s appealing to potential customers. If you have low-quality content, then people are less likely to engage with your website. This can result in even fewer return visits, which is why it’s important that you spend time making sure that the content on your site is high quality and easily accessible.
Your Site Doesn’t Maintain Conversational Tone
One of the big mistakes that many people make is not maintaining a conversational tone. Instead of having their website be informational with a friendly and welcoming tone, websites are often written in a formal or hard-to-read way. If visitors find your site to be too difficult to read, they might just move on and leave without contacting you. So remember to keep things casual and friendly when writing for your website.
People Don’t Find What They Search For
If you think people aren’t finding what they are looking for on your website, this could be because you haven’t updated the information in a long time. Visitors might find the same article is already posted on your blog, and if it has been a while since the information was written then visitors will leave feeling unsatisfied. If you want to keep your website healthy and successful, you need to make sure that users will always find what they’re looking for.
You Don’t Offer Clear Calls to Action Or Opt-In Boxes
A website’s design is an important factor in how it will work to benefit your business. You want the visitor to understand what they should do on your website and what they can expect. Clear calls-to-action or opt-in forms are important so that people know exactly how they can benefit from visiting your site. If they aren’t informed of how they can get something out of visiting your site, then you lose out on a valuable opportunity.
Your Site is Overwhelmed Or Confusing
If your site is overwhelming or confusing for visitors then it’s probably not providing the information that potential customers need. When people visit your website, they want to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. If your site is overwhelming and complicated, visitors will likely leave without finding what they are looking for. Your website might also be confusing if it doesn’t have a clear navigation system, which means your visitors won’t know where to go when they land on your homepage. This can be tricky because a visitor can get frustrated by trying to figure out where they should go next and many more people could potentially drop off before actually finding what they need.
Site Crawlability
When it comes to site crawlerabilty, it’s important to know that crawling is an essential part of understanding your web page’s overall structure.
Websites must lead visitors somewhere else within the site, from one page to the next, before they’re considered “crawlable.” Robots are responsible for web crawling.
A key tenet of good web crawlerability is that there are not any dead end pages while crawling through your site. Make an attempt to include internal links on each and every webpage, which creates a link between different parts of your site.
Breadcrumbs, Schema, and Structural Data Formats all help here. Make sure you understand and keep an eye on your Google Crawl Budget, too.
Internal Linking
A properly built website can help visitors navigate easily. But there are some basic rules you must follow to make sure your site is easy to access. Navigation is the process of finding a specific page within a website. There are several ways to do this, including internal linking, breadcrumbs, and dropdown menus.
Internal linking is a great way to connect related pages together. This makes it easier for both people and search engines to understand what each page does. A good example of this is Amazon.com. You don’t want to buy something and then forget where you bought it because the product description doesn’t link to the original listing.
Another benefit of internal linking is that it lets visitors know exactly how far they are into your website. When I land on my favorite fashion blog, StyleCaster, I see a list of categories along the left side of the screen. As soon as I scroll down, I see a list containing posts organized by category. Each post contains a short summary, image, and link to the full article. By clicking on the category name, I am taken directly to the page I wanted to read.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is one of the most common reasons why you might see low rankings in Google. In fact, according to Moz, over half of sites are affected by some form of duplicate content issues. And while there are many different types of duplicate content out there, we’ve narrowed down the list to six key categories that you should watch out for.
1. Image duplicates – This type of duplication happens when someone takes an image from another source and uses it on their site without permission. If you’re seeing this issue on your site, try contacting the website owner directly. They’ll likely want to know about it.
2. Spam – This is what happens when someone posts the same article on multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. You may end up with a bunch of shares on social media, but it won’t help your SEO.
3. Repurposed text – When someone rewrites an existing blog post, they often use the exact same language and keywords. While this isn’t necessarily a problem, it does make the original author look lazy.
4. Reused headers & footers – If you find yourself copying header images or footer copy across multiple pages, it could indicate a larger problem.
5. Cross-posting – When someone copies an entire blog post onto their personal profile, this can hurt both their reputation and your SEO.
6. Low quality content – Finally, if you’re posting content that doesn’t meet the standards set forth by Google, you risk getting penalized.
Navigation & User Experience
The usability standards that today’s Websites are held to are much tighter than in the early days. In fact, some people argue that there are too many rules around building good websites and that’s why we see so many “bad” sites. However, I don’t think that’s true. There are still plenty of great websites out there.
If a visitor comes across a badly built website, they’ll avoid interacting with it further and move on to another site. Additionally, nobody wants to spend their time on a website that doesn’t make sense. When you look at a website, you want to know exactly what you’re supposed to do. You want to feel confident that you can find the information you’re looking for. You want to know that there’s no hidden agenda behind the design or the content. You want to feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself.
And while it’s true that nobody likes clicking on a link that takes them somewhere else, that’s a small price to pay for getting a better understanding of a brand and being able to buy something online.
As far as user experience goes, it’s important because it impacts the way that visitors interpret your website. They’re going to take cues from your navigation and interaction points. If they can’t easily find what they’re looking for, they might decide to go somewhere else. If they can’t understand what they’re doing, they might give up quickly.
So, if you want to rank well in search engines, you’ve got to build a website that makes sense to both your customers and Google.
Conclusion
Your website’s success depends on its ability to communicate with your visitors. If you are struggling to reach visitors, you may have a website that is not optimized. Furthermore, if you want to increase the number of people who visit your site, you need to make sure that they find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible.
To help you achieve this goal, we have 120 point website audit for search engines like Google. We hope it will be useful in helping you improve your website so that more people can find it.
