Most newbie website owners make the same handful of mistakes in their first year. None of them is a disaster on its own, but together they leave a site that is harder to find, harder to read, and easier to break.
Here are the six beginner mistakes I see most often, what each one costs you, and how to fix it. Each ends with a quick check you can run on your own site.
- Not owning your own website
- Writing like it is going to print
- Too much on the page, or too little
- Never connecting the site to Google
- Publishing unfinished pages
- Skipping the housework
1. Not Owning Your Own Website
The first decision is where the site lives, and it is easy to get wrong without noticing. Some owners let a web designer or a relative register the domain in their own name. Others build on a platform that makes it hard to take the site with them if they ever want to leave.
Whatever platform you choose, make sure the domain name and the hosting account are registered to you, with your email address, and that you have the logins. For a business that plans to grow, a self-hosted WordPress site gives you the most control over design, features, and where the site lives. Hosted builders can work well for simpler sites, as long as you understand what you can and cannot change later.
Quick check: Can you log in to your domain registrar and your hosting account yourself, today, without asking anyone for a password?
2. Writing Like It Is Going to Print
People read websites differently from brochures. They open a page, scan it for the thing they came for, and leave if they do not see it quickly. Long paragraphs, formal language, and industry jargon all slow that down.
Write the way you talk to customers. Use short paragraphs, clear headings, and plain words, and put the most important information first. If your business is formal by nature, keep the tone professional, but keep the sentences short.
Quick check: Read your homepage out loud. Any sentence you would never say to a customer in person needs rewriting.
3. Too Much on the Page, or Too Little
Service pages and your homepage should give visitors the overview they need to decide whether to contact you, not every detail of how you work. Too much text buries the point, and too little leaves basic questions unanswered.
Blog posts work differently. There is no minimum word count that helps you in search, and longer is not automatically better. A post should be as long as it takes to answer the question well, and no longer. Write for the person asking, not for a word target.
The same goes for design. One or two fonts, a few colors, real photos of your work, and one clear call to action per page keep the important parts from getting lost. Seven ways your website is costing you customers covers the design problems that cost the most.
Quick check: Pick one service page. Could a visitor tell what you offer, where you offer it, and how to reach you within the first screen on a phone?
4. Never Connecting the Site to Google
A lot of new sites launch without ever being connected to Google’s free tools, so the owner has no idea whether Google can find the site, which searches it shows up for, or whether something has gone wrong. You cannot fix what you cannot see.
Three free setups cover most of it. Google Search Console shows which of your pages Google has indexed, which searches bring people to your site, and any security or indexing problems it finds. Google Analytics shows what visitors do once they arrive, including whether they fill out your contact form. And if you serve customers locally, your Google Business Profile should link to your website so the two support each other.
Quick check: Log in to Google Search Console. If your website is not listed there, set it up today and submit your sitemap.
5. Publishing Unfinished Pages
A page that says “Coming Soon,” a menu link that goes nowhere, or a placeholder paragraph left over from a template all tell visitors the site, and maybe the business, is not quite ready. New WordPress sites also ship with a “Sample Page” and a “Hello world!” post that are easy to forget about.
Do not publish a page until it is finished, proofread, and checked on a phone. If a section is not ready, leave it out of the menu until it is. While the whole site is being built, a single simple holding page that tells people when you launch is fine.
Quick check: Search Google for site:yourdomain.com and look through the results for “Sample Page,” “Hello world,” “Coming Soon,” or template text.
6. Skipping the Housework
A website is not finished when it launches. WordPress, your theme, and your plugins need regular updates, and you need backups stored somewhere other than the website itself. Skip both and the site can break or get hacked, with no clean copy to restore.
This past summer, a former client’s site that we had worked on in the past, and that nobody had maintained since, started showing a critical error to every visitor. It stayed that way for more than two weeks. The owner had not logged in since the work ended and did not know anything was wrong. Basic monitoring would have caught it the same day, and a recent backup would have made it much faster to restore. Six website maintenance tasks that protect your business lays out the routine.
Quick check: Log in to your WordPress dashboard. How many updates are waiting, and when was your last backup?
Get Help Getting Your Website Right
Once the site itself is in good shape, the next set of problems is usually technical or about how you market it. Seven technical mistakes that hurt your conversion rate covers what goes wrong under the hood, and these ten digital marketing mistakes are the ones I see most often on the marketing side.
If you are new to running a website and want to know which of these your own site is making, start with a free website audit. I will tell you what to fix first, in plain language, with no pitch attached.
This post was previously published and has been updated for content and relevancy.
Numbers 2 and 3 are glaring at me. I am working on getting those fixed. Thank goodness I have an amazing web developer who is patient. If you are looking for someone to help you build a fantastic looking, usable and user friendly website, Paul Taubman is the one.
You are too kind, Robyn! I am glad you are digging your new website! To overcome #2 & #3, I think the easiest way is to simply “Be Yourself.” Just sit down and write. Write it as if you were speaking to a friend or colleague.
What an easy to read list! You鈥檙e right, each of these mistakes happen all the time. My personal pet peeve is #5, lol. Anyway, I think this list is valuable for the newbie.
It is easy to make these mistakes when you don’t know what you don’t know!
Turns out that this very day I wrote a blog post myself on the importance of UPDATING. There are some nasty surprises waiting out there for people who neglect what you have cleverly called “website housework!”
Some things you just gotta do… or get someone to do them for you! We do this kind of work for about 100 clients each month.
First, who said you can write about all my mistakes….I know for a fact I made them all and then some- heck even after being a “newbie” still making some of these mistakes……hard to break some habits…..like my dogs I am a creature of habit- I do like my classic and not block editor afterall, my comfort zone is important! Anyway, with reading some of these blogs and learning and taking courses online to blog better I know I can get past these and other mistakes! Oh I tickled this post already!
Glad you were able to glean some helpful info, Pamela!
Thanks for these tips, Paul! I need to think about my writing style and make sure I am remembering to make it conversational. Plus, I need to keep what you said about detail in mind.
Only change your writing style if it makes sense, Jeanine!
Thank you for the tips – I’m working on 2-5 馃槈
One question:
I’ve been using the Yoast plugin for readability and SEO. I think I’m improving in my passive voice, and lately, I’ve been trying to work on my transition words/phrases. (The plugin measures and demonstrates where you need to improve.)
However… when I add in all the transition words it sounds less and less “like me”. .. Are these transition words REALLY important to SEO and readability ranking in search engines?
You always want to write for people FIRST, and then the search engines. If people do not like what they are reading on the page, they will leave and the search engines will ding you for that anyway.
Thanks for all the tips, Paul!
Lily
You are welcome, Lily!