On today’s show we’re performing a site review for Development Dynamics, a business training and development company. Unfortunately this one isn’t too pretty, so we decided to break down some of the problems we found with the site in this weeks blog post to help other businesses avoid the more common pitfalls of business website development.

Visible issues

The biggest problem we find with many poorly designed business sites is a lack of clear direction. When users land on the page, what do they see?

In the case of today’s video site review, users were provided with no clear course of action and were led to a static welcome page with limited interactivity. Adding simple things like a large contact number, an eye-catching consultation form or a mailing list signup form will provide potential customers with a way to take the next step in the purchasing process and at the same time give your business more information on your customers.

Another big issue we see on many business websites is a lack of relevant, keyword-rich content. If you’re focusing on search to drive traffic to your business online and DON’T have content designed around your key phrases then you’re missing out on a big opportunity to not only increase rankings, but to also make your target pages more relevant to the users searching for it.

Before your site is built, think about why it exists. Are you looking to generate leads, make more sales or simply provide more information to potential customers? Figuring out a purpose for your website and building the usability around this primary purpose will ensure your site is usable, helpful and relevant to searchers.

Under the hood

However the key to building a great business website isn’t just about doing the right things on the surface. In this weeks site review we also found a whole host of other SEO issues lurking beneath the surface.

Biggest of all was that we found a slew of empty pages on the site in Google’s index. A whopping 50% of the site was made up of empty pages, which means Google won’t get a real sense of what the site is about and won’t send its users to the site because it provides a bad experience for searchers. The problem is easy to fix, but devastating if nobody is looking.

These kinds of issues can be crippling for your business and can effectively negate all the time and effort spent on your website. While our site reviews can expose some of the more glaring issues, prevention is the best cure to all your SEO woes. Building a website that is search friendly out-of-the-box provides you with a solid foundation to grow your rankings and gives your business the best possible chance to prosper online.

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