When it comes to updating your website, small changes can have a big impact in ways you didn’t expect. If you’re making edits without a strategy, you might unknowingly hurt your site’s visibility, user experience, and overall performance with search engine rankings.
Before you hit “publish” on your next set of changes, here are three pitfalls we regularly see after DIY website updates, which often lead to major corrections or complete redesigns.
Make Sure Your Site Shines on All Devices
Any change you make should look great and function smoothly on both desktop and mobile. Fonts, images, and layouts often shift to fit on smaller screens, and since you’re most likely going to make those changes from your desktop, it’s an easy oversight to make.
Over 50% of website traffic originates from mobile users. A site that’s hard to navigate on a phone will most certainly drive visitors away. And since Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in its search results, a non-optimized site will rank lower, meaning your website will appear much later in the search results pages.
Action Steps:
Preview Before Publishing: Always check how your changes appear on mobile devices. Most website builders, including Wix, offer a mobile preview feature.
Responsive Design: Ensure that images, text, and other elements adjust appropriately to different screen sizes.
Simplify Navigation: Use clear menus and buttons that are easy to tap on smaller screens.
Stay Consistent with Design
Consistency in design isn't just about aesthetics. It's about creating a seamless experience for your visitors. Your website should feel polished and professional, not like a patchwork of mismatched styles. If you swap out fonts, colors, or button styles on a whim, your brand can start to look disorganized and untrustworthy. If your design is all over the place, visitors may assume your business is, too.
Action Steps:
Stick to your brand’s color palette and typography: Random changes can make your site look amateurish. Only use your established color scheme and fonts for any new content or pages.
Make your elements uniform: Use the same button styles, spacing, and heading sizes across all pages for a clean, cohesive experience. Predictable layouts and design elements make it easier for visitors to navigate and find information.
Avoid inconsistent image styles: Mixing bright, modern graphics with outdated pixelated images or low-resolution photos (like cell phone pics saved from social media) undermines the overall visual quality of the site.
Check alignment and spacing: Misaligned elements make a site feel cluttered or difficult to follow.
Regular Reviews: Periodically check your site for any inconsistencies and address them promptly.
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3. Keep Search Engines in Mind with Every Update
Your website’s search ranking depends on more than just keywords and indexation. It’s also about performance, structure, and how search engines interpret changes.
Action Steps:
Use SEO-Friendly Headlines & Content: Search engines rely on clear, structured headlines (H1, H2, H3) to understand your page. If you tweak headlines, ensure they still include relevant keywords and maintain a logical hierarchy. Random changes to headings can confuse search engines and lower your visibility.
Use Relevant Keywords: Incorporate terms and phrases that your target audience is likely to search for.
Optimize Images for Speed: Adding large, uncompressed images can slow down your site, hurting both user experience and search rankings. Compress images before uploading, and always include alt text to improve accessibility and SEO.
Re-Index Your Site After Updates: If you make major content changes, search engines won’t automatically recognize them right away.
Avoid Deleting or Changing URLs Without Redirects: If you rename or remove a page, set up a 301 redirect to avoid broken links, which can hurt SEO and user experience.
Check for Keyword Dilution: If you heavily edit content, make sure you’re not accidentally removing key terms that helped the page rank in the first place. Keep an eye on keyword density and natural placement.
Do you know how your website is performing?
There’s so much more to making website changes than site owners often realize. Even small edits can help or hurt your site’s visibility. For clients that have content that has to frequently change by necessity, La Mejor Website offers maintenance plans so you have professional, on-going design support throughout the year for all of your update needs.
As a Wix specialist with 15 years of experience, I design websites with longevity in mind. My goal is to create sites that don’t need frequent redesigns, so my clients can focus on growing their business instead. Check out one of our 160+ Five-Star Google reviews.
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