Modern Website Design; Beware of The
Internet’s No Man’s Land!
Find out why 90% of web pages end up in the Internet’s No Man’s Land.
Modern Website Design Is a Different Beast
From 2006, 2010, 2015, and 2019!
Today’s websites must include certain elements to avoid the proverbial Internet’s No Man’s Land. What is the Internet’s No Man’s Land? This is the dreaded space where there are no website visitors, no conversions, no subscribers, no leads, no sales, no clicks, and no income. Alarmingly, 90% of web pages fall into this category. Let’s dissect a study performed by the SEO experts from Ahrefs.
If you don’t know, Ahrefs provides tools for SEO professionals to assist in understanding SEO; keep in mind, that is a basic overview. The most important point is; they are the undisputed kings of SEO information, ranking insights, and raw backlink data.
Special thanks to Tim Soulo, the CMO at Ahrefs, for sharing this data with us. The study they performed was long and tedious, so we summed it up for you; polling from their entire database of over one billion pages, Ahrefs found that 90.63% of all pages in their index received zero traffic from Google; equally worse, 5.29% of those web pages only garnered ten visits or less per month.
Obviously, the webpages that get zero traffic have more issues than a subscription to Time Magazine that started in the 1950s. In a nutshell, modern website design is much more than aesthetics. Tons of great looking websites get zero traffic; what we’re going to do is provide you with the top elements your website MUST HAVE to become a traffic magnet. If you get any of these wrong, you get all of them wrong! It’s like building a nuclear submarine; mistakes are not allowed! That stated, here we go.
This means your typography, images, white space, color scheme, logo, branding, and overall layout must all be on point. Never launch a site without putting it through rigorous appeal testing. What may work in one niche or market may not work in another; that’s why it’s imperative that you do your homework.
When Google started rolling out its mobile-first indexing, countless website owners and site designers rebuffed the move as if it was an insignificant option. They were WRONG! If your website is not responsive, give up and get a job at McDonald’s or Wendy’s.
Site Must Have an SSL Certificate
If you perform a search regarding having an SSL Certificate, disregard all of the answers dated 2020 going backward. For 2021, going forward, you NEED an SSL Certificate. It doesn’t matter that you may not be selling products; visitors will still be slapped with a RED FLAG WARNING! Your site must be HTTPS:// vs. HTTP://, no exceptions!
Your home page must contain high quality web copy! SEO content will not do. When visitors land on your home page, they should be compelled, seduced, encouraged, inspired, or mystified to read more, sign up, subscribe, click a link, purchase a product, follow, download a free eBook or complete some type of action.
If your home page does not consist of web copy, stick your head in the sand and count to ten thousand every day until you correct this serious infraction.
Site Must Have Potent SEO Content
Your other pages (not your legal pages) must be SEO optimized for the search engines; this means they qualify to be indexed and ranked. This implies that you carried out intensive keyword research, and you are targeting keywords with a purpose.
It’s one thing to attract the search engines, but the other part is attracting and keeping the people’s attention; your website must do both equally well. That means your content must:
- Solve a problem
- Make them laugh
- Inspire them
- Encourage them
- Educate them
- Show them how to do something
When they land on your site, what are they gaining or benefiting? If the answer is nothing, they will leave as quickly as they came, and they will not be coming back.
Site Must Be Interlinked
When they land on your site, what are they gaining or benefiting? If the answer is nothing, they will leave as quickly as they came, and they will not be coming back.
Interlinking makes it easy for all of your web pages to be indexed in the SERPs. Oftentimes, a website with sixty pages will only have three pages indexed because none of the pages on that website are interlinked. There are other interlinking benefits, but if your site is not interlinked, you are officially put-on punishment; go stand in the corner for five hours a day until you fix this issue.
If your site cannot pass site speed tests and you fail to fix the issues, why not shut your site down? What’s the point of forcing people to wait until your slow loading site loads, when they could be doing better things with their time? If you fail or refuse to fix this critical issue, the punishment is; you are banished from the Google SERPs until you address the issues slowing your site down.
If your website cannot pass an exhaustive SEO audit, your website receives a big fat “Red F!” An SEO audit identifies technical issues that affect your rankings and site speed. Most importantly, the SEO audit is a requirement to set up an SEO backlinking strategy correctly. No SEO audit equals no SEO success! A failed SEO audit equals no SEO success.
This is not the final stage of a modern website design; it is the beginning. If the person building your website is not familiar with these elements, educate them ASAP! Be advised, back in 2006 through 2018, people could acquire worthless backlinks and get away with it; not anymore! Nowadays, you must have high-value backlinks, or you are doomed!
Backlinking Is Not The Final Stage
of a Modern Website Design
This is not the final stage of a modern website design; it is the beginning. If the person building your website is not familiar with these elements, educate them ASAP! Be advised, back in 2006 through 2018, people could acquire worthless backlinks and get away with it; not anymore! Nowadays, you must have high-value backlinks, or you are doomed!