I once talked to a website owner who had an 80% bounce rate on his homepage and figured it was normal. Can you imagine if 80% of the people who looked at you immediately ran in the opposite direction? This isn’t normal. Web design is an element of SEO that many amateur SEOs miss. It doesn’t matter if you can get high rankings if none of the searchers stays on the given webpage after clicking through.

SEO-friendly web design is a lot like getting a date; appearance matters. People make decisions about the credibility of a website the instant the page loads. Like people, credible websites have a very specific look and feel to them. They generally have a clear logo in the top left, and a navigation bar horizontally on the top of the page or vertically on the lefthand side. They have less than five colors in their layout (not including images), and they have clear, readable text.

Would you feel comfortable leaving your children with a person in a bright orange prison jumpsuit? Of course not! In the same way, visitors to websites are not going to feel comfortable if they are greeted with popups, loud music, and a multicolored skull logo. Of course those are extreme examples.

The common mistakes that I see are more along the line of the following:

• Lack of focus
• Crowded text
• Slow loading times
• Auto-playing music
• Unclear navigation
• Excess redirects

As an SEO , I cannot stress the importance of good design. Though it may be fun and exciting to stretch the limits, it is not fun to be poor because 80 percent of your client’s would-be customers leave the website directly after entering.