Website Errors
Opportunity is the focus of website development and identifying error is part of this. Progress comes from eliminating technical faults, which can be a barrier to visitors or search engines.
- As the image above suggests, search robots have issues obtaining data from non standard sites. They have improved but an all flash site for example can be a problem for them, or disabled visitors, or popular mobile devices. Accessible content is a primary need.
- Ease of access extends to website navigation, no point to a decent site with navigation in flash or javascript. A proportion of visitors can't move around and search engines may fail to understand the site.
- Regardless of format, disfunctional navigation has a similar effect. There may be reasons to channel visitors but try to make core options available on each page, along with an easy to follow sitemap.
- A slow website deters visitors, some physically lose their temper with slow pages and far more never become customers. Neither do search engines have limitless resources or patience, they are also now factoring site performance into their ranking algorithms.
There are other common flaws in design, often site specific. Beyond making a website accessible and responsive, try to avoid the technical errors below.
Common Website Mistakes
- Most blog or content management systems have an option to block search engines. A meta tag such as
will show in the head section of the source code and/or the robots.txt file be set to disallow. Unfortunate people have waited months wondering why their site is not indexed, double check privacy settings. - Your server also needs to allow robot access and be functional. Even intermittent downtime can lose visitors or search position. Check robot access regularly using Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools. Do the same for browser access, going to the site as a visitor would.
- Valid code is not essential but valuable. A page can get away with errors yet be invisible to a browser or robot through one error. Harder to solve if you need to work through many, neither will you know if all browsers, or search robots are as happy as they might be. Make the effort and keep code reasonably valid.
- Do not write content for search engines, they don't buy anything and are no longer interested in that approach. The same for spending hours filling out meta tags, such as the keywords tag which is completely ignored by leading search engines. Robots are helped by content but largely in the way people are.
- Duplicate content is an enemy of search position and not ideal for visitors. Avoid the temptation to use content from elsewhere, or duplication on your own site. Where unavoidable for technical or visitor requirements, make sure you take duplicates out of the search equation.
- A common error with content is a lack of this. Not everyone wants to read long articles and your site might need to get to the point but compromise. Sites with minimal content may not be trusted by people or search engines. Neither will stagnant content help, a steady flow of new additions is part of maintaining a website.
- Most gimmicks do not work, neither do poor spelling or grammar. If a website is representing your business, this needs to be as tidy, trustworthy and communicative as you would be if you were visiting a client.
- Inbound links are valuable for traffic and search. Even so, spending vast time on this is not good use of time. Links from irrelevant sites, directories, blog comments do not bring much traffic, or help much in search. A few good quality links are more use.
Avoiding Core Errors
As simple as this sounds, the best ways to avoid mistakes is think of your users. Look at technical requirements but focus on most aspects in a website from a visitor's perspective. Search engines will be equally happy as they want to satisfy their users, who are your visitors.
We consider both search engines and visitors in our website reports, as the best way to serve a business. The same applies to our mediation and expert evidence services, if we can help in any way, please get in touch.
