Let’s be honest, it’s easy to make a few mistakes when building your own website. However, some simple mistakes can be incredibly damaging to your website as they can make users click away or bounce off the site.

In this article, we cover the top 5 most common issues we see, and how to fix them, as well as recommending useful tips and tools to avoid it happening again. 

 

1. Slow page speed

 

A slow page loading speed is one of the most damaging things for your website. If users click on your website, they’re expecting quick loading speeds and a smooth seamless experience. Slow-loading pages are frustrating, look unprofessional and are just downright bad. Slow pages are also bad for SEO as Google prioritises user experience and a slow-loading website can lead to a low website ranking. 

 

Ways to fix this:

• if your website is image-heavy, you may be overloading it with large image files. Images uploaded should be no more than 300kb. Use tools such as Tinify to help reduce image size without compromising quality
• Consider upgrading your website host, if your website is on a slow server this can impact website performance
• Enabling caching will speed up your website for returning visitors (Cache is where your browser stores images, fonts, and various technical elements like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to reduce bandwidth usage and improve loading speed.)
• Use tools like Page speed checker you can consistently check your website load speed (this is also good for checking your sites accessibility). 

If your whole website is loading slowly see here.

 

2. Poor mobile optimisation

 

Over 60% of website traffic now comes from mobile devices. With 92.3% of internet users using their mobile phones to access the internet. This means you need to optimise your site for mobile use. Gone are the days when people only use laptops and desktop computers to search online!

 

Ways to optimise your site for mobile optimisation:

• Make sure your website has a responsive design. This means your website can adapt to different screen sizes
• Google has a ‘mobile friendly’ test to search for and identify issues
• Check your images can scale properly on mobile devices, this is something that needs to be done by a developer usually, however you can see how your website scales by viewing it on a mobile device or tablet.

If you’re unsure if your website is optimised for mobile or not, https://responsivetesttool.com/ can allow you to view your website in different sizes for different devices.

 

3. Broken Links and 404 errors

Broken links are awful, not only are they bad for your user experience, but they’re also bad for SEO. Broken internal links signal to search engines that your site is out of date, which can cause it to rank poorly. Broken internal links can also cause crawl errors, meaning some pages might not show up in organic search results.  Your sites are crawled by things called bot crawlers, bots that search webpages and index the content on them.

 

Fixing Broken Links and 404 errors

 

• To fix them, you can update the link, redirect it or remove it. The two main types of redirects are permanent (called a code 301), used when a page has been moved for good, and temporary (called a code 302), typically used for short-term changes like site maintenance or limited-time promotions.
• You can fix broken backlinks by contacting the owner of the site you are linking to
• To prevent these, use tools such as Semrush to scan for broken links or Google’s search console  to notice them as soon as possible, rather than waiting for someone to flag them to you

 

4. Weak or Missing meta descriptions 

 

Meta titles are the excerpts that you see when you search for something. These are great for SEO and allow users to see what your page covers before they click on it. Meta descriptions should be 150 characters roughly (depending on what device you’re viewing) and include your keyword for the article. 

 

• Tools such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math give you a ranking for your meta description (based on red to green), and both have free versions.

 

 

5. Weak or duplicate content

Weak or duplicate content can be bad for your website as it can result in user confusion and keyword cannibalism, affecting how your website ranks on search engine results pages. Keyword cannibalism occurs when multiple of your pages target the same keyword(s), therefore harming each other’s rankings rather than helping. They can harm your rankings by diluting authority, splitting backlinks, and confusing search engines, leading to lower rankings and reduced click-through ratesHow to improve your content:

• Consolidate similar pages, making similar content into a single page, This can help reduce duplicate content
• Using NoIndex tags can help avoid duplicate content damaging your website as it tells search engines not to crawl your page.
• Use different keywords – don’t use the same keyword multiple times, dig into longtail keywords and rearrange word orders
• Rewrite your content and make it more unique to avoid duplicate content

 

Most of these issues are often solved with quick, low-effort fixes or can be easily prevented. To spot these issues early, tools such as Semrush (to run website audits), Yoast SEO and broken link checker can be great and even help you prevent issues like this from rising again. 

 

If you find yourself struggling with these or any other issues, get in touch with our experts. We would be happy to help (and we build our sites with these things in mind)! Contact us now.