5 More Web Design and SEO Mistakes Killing Your Rankings

If you've already addressed the fundamental web design and SEO mistakes on your website, like we covered in our previous blog "7 Web Designs and SEO Mistakes Killing Your Rankings", then you're ahead of most UK businesses. However, there's another layer of critical errors that many seemingly well-optimised sites still make, these are the mistakes that separate good websites from exceptional ones - the subtle issues that continue to drain your rankings even after you've ticked the basic boxes.

As mentioned before, as a marketing professional with years of experience helping UK businesses improve their visibility, a degree in the field and even nice little certification in SEO, I've identified patterns that consistently hold websites back. These aren't the obvious errors everyone talks about; they're the nuanced web design and SEO mistakes that require a deeper understanding of how search engines and users interact with your content.

Table of Contents

• 1. Ignoring Website Accessibility Standards

• 2. Creating Poor URL Structures

• 3. Broken Internal Links and Poor Link Architecture

• 4. Publishing Thin or Duplicate Content

• 5. Neglecting Schema Markup Implementation

Summary

• Accessibility failures limiting both users and search engines

• Poor URL structure confusing crawlers and visitors alike

• Broken internal linking damaging site authority flow

• Thin or duplicate content undermining trustworthiness

• Missing schema markup leaving rankings on the table

Bottom line: Even well-designed sites can suffer from these advanced web design and SEO mistakes, addressing them separates performing websites from top performers in search results, fix these issues to unlock your site's full ranking potential.

5 More Web Design and SEO Mistakes Killing Your Rankings

1. Ignoring Website Accessibility Standards

Accessibility isn't just about doing the right thing – it's increasingly important for SEO, Google wants to rank websites that provide excellent experiences for all users, including those with disabilities, yet many UK websites fail basic accessibility standards, creating barriers for users and sending negative signals to search engines.

Common issues include insufficient colour contrast, missing skip navigation links, no keyboard navigation support, and videos without captions, according to the UK Parliament, there are over 16 million disabled people in the UK which is around 24% of the population – that's a significant audience you could be excluding. Implement WCAG 2.1 AA standards as a minimum, use semantic HTML properly, and ensure all interactive elements are keyboard accessible.

Screen readers and search engine crawlers navigate websites in similar ways, If your site is difficult for assistive technologies to understand, it's likely difficult for Google too, this web design and SEO mistake directly impacts both your user base and your rankings.

2. Creating Poor URL Structures

Your URL structure is more important than many realise, clean, descriptive URLs help users understand page content before clicking and help search engines categorise your pages correctly yet countless UK websites use dynamic URLs filled with parameters, session IDs, or meaningless strings of numbers.

A good URL should be readable, concise, and include your target keyword, compare "www.example.co.uk/products/mens-running-trainers" to "www.example.co.uk/p?id=847362&cat=27", the first tells users and Google exactly what to expect; the second tells them nothing. Avoid excessive subdirectories – keeping URLs as short as possible whilst remaining descriptive improves both usability and SEO.

Additionally, maintain URL consistency, don't use "about-us" on one page and "about_us" on another, establish conventions (hyphens over underscores, lowercase letters) and stick to them across your entire site. URL structure is part of your site's foundation – getting it wrong means building on unstable ground.

3. Broken Internal Links and Poor Link Architecture

Internal linking is one of the most underutilised web design and SEO strategies, your internal links distribute authority throughout your site, help search engines discover content, and guide visitors to relevant pages but many UK websites have broken links, orphaned pages, or illogical linking patterns that waste this potential.

Regularly audit your site for broken links using tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs, a single broken link frustrates users, but hundreds signal to Google that your site is poorly maintained, similarly, orphaned pages – those with no internal links pointing to them – may never be indexed because crawlers can't find them.

Strategic internal linking also improves rankings for specific pages, link from high-authority pages to ones you want to rank better, using descriptive anchor text that includes relevant keywords naturally. Many businesses focus entirely on building external backlinks whilst ignoring the power of their own internal link structure – a costly oversight.

4. Publishing Thin or Duplicate Content

Content quality directly impacts rankings, yet many websites publish thin pages that offer little value or duplicate content across multiple URLs, Google's algorithms have become sophisticated at identifying low-quality content, and sites that publish it suffer in search results.

Thin content includes pages with minimal text (under 300 words typically), content scraped from other sources, or pages created solely to rank for keywords without providing genuine value, UK businesses often create location pages for every city they serve, but if each page says essentially the same thing with just the city name changed, that's duplicate content.

Every page should have a unique purpose and provide substantial, valuable information, If you can't write at least 500-800 words of unique, useful content for a page, question whether it needs to exist, consolidate similar pages, expand thin content, or implement canonical tags when duplicate content is unavoidable. This web design and SEO mistake is particularly damaging because it affects your entire site's authority and trustworthiness in Google's eyes.

5. Neglecting Schema Markup Implementation

Schema markup (structured data) helps search engines understand your content's context and can earn you enhanced search results like rich snippets, star ratings, and featured panels, yet according to various studies, less than 30% of websites use schema markup – a massive missed opportunity for UK businesses.

Implementing schema is straightforward using JSON-LD format, and Google provides free tools to test your markup, for local businesses, LocalBusiness schema is essential, e-commerce sites should use Product schema with pricing and availability, articles should include Article schema with publish dates and authors. FAQ and How-To schema can help you appear in featured snippets.

Rich results significantly improve click-through rates, a star rating displayed in search results can increase clicks by up to 35%, recipe cards, event listings, and product information all stand out in search results, giving you a competitive advantage over businesses that haven't implemented schema.

This is one of the easiest web design and SEO wins you can achieve with relatively little effort.

Ready to Elevate Your Website?

These five web design and SEO mistakes represent the difference between a decent website and a truly optimised one, while they may seem technical, addressing them delivers measurable improvements in rankings, traffic, and user engagement across search results. At Redwood Digitals, our team have even gone the extra mile and provided a complete SEO Audit checklist for you to use for your business so that you can get all your ducks in a row.

The businesses dominating your industry's search results aren't just avoiding mistakes – they're implementing best practices that many competitors overlook, accessibility, clean URLs, strong internal linking, quality content, and schema markup all contribute to a website that both users and search engines love. Don't let these advanced issues hold you back from the rankings you deserve, a professional technical SEO audit can identify exactly which of these mistakes are affecting your site and provide a clear roadmap for fixing them.

If you're ready to take your website's performance to the next level and outrank your competition, get in touch today for an in-depth analysis of your web design and SEO strategy.

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