So you are building your own website and things are going well, it can be quite easy to get carried away because A). Creating a website is enjoyable and interesting and B). There are thousands of different options available when it comes to customizing your site. However, it’s important to make sure that you don’t go over the top and create something that is baffling and confusing. If your website is too complicated, you run the risk of scaring off readers…if the page will even load in the first place! If that isn’t enough to get you to stop downloading all of those plugins and upload those photos, consider your SEO. Simple websites often lead to better SEO.
Why Simple Websites Offer Greater SEO Benefits
When you have less to worry about on your website, it’s probably easier for you as a Webmaster to manage your SEO efforts and really make things happen. Aside from just having more time and thinking about other SEO factors you’d perform, however, Google actually finds it easier overall to crawl simpler websites.
There are essentially two main reasons that simple websites fair better in the SEO game than the complicated ones:
Google Can’t Keep Up. Putting your actual SEO efforts aside, Google bots are not necessarily keeping up with all of the latest design and display technology. It’s hard to believe that Google would be behind on anything, but the truth is that this isn’t the first thing Google has on its mind. Their ability to understand and then crawl all of these new things just isn’t as fast as the rate at which they are developing.
Google Make a lot of their changes because of Big Brands. Google will often make changes because big brands find different ways around their system, or sometimes you will find that they are not earning the rankings that Google thinks they deserve because of their popularity. Michael Gray wrote about this topic in an article posted on his SEO website, Gray Wolf SEO and explained that when Google makes adjustments to their algorithm, it is us (the Webmasters) who will need to adapt. In the latest case, this means making the website similar.
