Creating a business website and starting to optimize it for search engines is not the only thing that a marketer has to do. There is still more work that a marketer has to focus on, and this has to be done on an on-going basis, not just in the beginning. If your website is not well-formatted or contains errors, it can be penalized by search engines.

Additionally, in order to give the website an authenticity among the visitors, it has to be designed in a professional manner with strictly no errors. The following is a list of the ten most common mistakes that business owners and website designers often ignore when building or updating their business websites. These errors are quite common but with a little bit of caution, you can avoid them.

    1. Page Titles That Are Too Large: In order to get noticed by the search engines, you need to keep your webpage title brief and concise. Make sure that the title reflects proper keywords. It seems spammy when the titles are too large. As a marketer, you need to ensure that the title gives a brief description of the page elements. Additionally, a page title should not contain more than 70 characters.

 

    1. Longer Meta Description: A meta description is the simple description that gives the readers and the search engines a clear view of what your website contains. Making the meta description too large, such as if it’s longer than 150 words in size, can make your website seem ‘spammy’ to search engines. Make sure that the meta description is below 150 characters in length. Builtwith.com estimates that at least 1,271,960 of websites have formatted meta descriptions at this length with significant Alexa rankings.

 

    1. Failure To Use Keywords In Titles: Another very common mistake that many business owners make is not reflecting keywords in page and category titles. Proper usage of keywords is highly necessary because it helps the search engines to determine whether the pages are relevant to the keywords used or not.

 

    1. Failure To Use Variations Of Keywords: It is widely believed that more than 50% of the traffic that you get from the search engines are not from the keywords that you use. That means, if you focus on any particular keyword, you are likely to miss some bigger chances. So, instead of using one or two keywords, try to implement some variations.

 

    1. Not Using A Fixed Domain: An old saying states, “old is gold.” It is true for a search engine optimizer. If your website is not a fixed one and is supposed to expire in a few months, the website looks less authentic. So, try to register your domain for a longer time so that search engines never underestimate you.

 

    1. Images Without ALT Texts: If you are thinking that only the written content of your website generates traffic, then you are absolutely wrong. When uploading an image, make sure that it has some keyword rich ALT texts. It helps the search engines to filter images for specific keywords.

 

    1. Not Using Google Analytics: Are you ignoring Google Analytics? If so, then you are ignoring Google, which is the biggest search engine on the planet. Google Analytics not only gives you detailed traffic estimations for your website, it makes your website reputable to the search engines as well. If you have yet to install analytics on your website, it would be a good idea to do so as soon as possible. According to Wikipedia, 57% of the top 10,000 websites have Google Analytics installed.

 

    1. Lengthy Conversion Forms: Converting every lead to a sale is a big challenge for every marketer. But the process can be made simple if you add easy to handle conversion forms rather than complex ones. Compare your conversion forms with your competing websites and simplify them if needed.

 

    1. Text Too Large or Too Little: Having qualified web content is a requirement for any successful business website, but make sure that the web content that you are posting isn’t too short, too large, or too long.

 

  1. Irrelevant 404 Page: The 404 error page is a page that you definitely don’t want your visitors to land on. But, if in fact they land on this page, make sure that you can direct them to visit real pages. Optimize the 404 page so that visitors don’t get a negative impression about your website.

Finally, to err is human. It’s only normal to have minor issues with your website, but the fewer errors your website contains, the more traffic it gets in the long run. So, even if the issues are minor, get them fixed and always make sure to check and re-check your website not only at the beginning but as time goes on as well.

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