A lot of site owners don’t realise it, but appearance counts for a lot in search engine optimisation. If your page doesn’t look right, your bounce rate will be fairly high. That’s bad news for your rankings. If you want to make it in the search engines, you have to watch your looks.

In SEO, it’s just as important to know what not to do as what to do. To that end, here are seven things which can really put users off reading your pages:

*Excessive text. Lots of sites fall into the trap of trying to convey as much as possible on a page. This crowds the reader. Remember that internet users don’t tend to read lots of text, even if it’s in small paragraphs.

*Too much white space. White space is one of those issues site owners find difficult to judge. Many web pages have too little white space. Some have too much. It’s a matter of balance. Pages tend to do well when around a quarter of the visible page is white space.

*Images, or lack thereof. Sites often have problems with images, either because there are too many of them or far too few, depending on how your site has been designed. Some web designers, coming from a design background, put in images that are too large to be practicable. The amount of page these take up may look pretty, but results in a lack of information. On the other hand, sites that have been built from a technical perspective often tend to have no pictures at all, causing an even greater problem.

Images are necessary on your site to give your reader’s eyes a rest. They break up text, and they can communicate without words. Images have to be handled carefully for SEO, so talk to your search engine optimisation consultant about the ones on your site.

*Crazy fonts. Although most businesses know to stick to one or two fonts in their design, they still use the strangest fonts imaginable. There is no crime in having ordinary fonts on your pages. It just means they won’t be distracting.

Another problem is when fonts become too large. It’s good to have fonts at 12 points or above, but don’t go crazy.

*Ugly heading fonts. In contrast to the point above, though, you want your headings to stand out. Don’t just increase the point size of your standard Arial font for your headlines. Choose something that’s got a bit of personality. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about choosing fonts for SEO.

*Soul-draining colours. You know the sort of colours we’re talking about here. For some reason, lots of corporations and major businesses feel that steel blue and light grey are excellent colours. They aren’t. On the web, they’re soul-draining.

*Old design styles. Going old-school doesn’t work on the net. Make sure your layouts are up-to-date, if not fashionable.

These are not only ways to put users off, they’re things that you’ll commonly see around the net. Avoid the above and you’re ahead of the game.