Website design is a skill that shouldn't be left to designers, your teenage nephew or anyone else as you must retain control or you may make one of these 6 fatal website design mistakes.

1. Do you have a fancy graphic logo?

Do you have a flash artistic logo that sits proudly on your site? Do you extend this to graphics for the website buttons? If you rely on graphics then you're throwing away search engine traffic.

Search engines can only see text and not graphics so if you rely on graphics for your logo and your site navigation then you're throwing away the chance for the search engines to index your business name and your key search keywords that you've probably used for your main topic headings. You haven't done this? Then you better get your site changed.

2. Do you use flash introductions?

Flash graphic introductions are a pain. Sure they can be skipped but they simply annoy people and are invisible to search engines - a complete waste of money and effort.

3. Do you use too many keywords?

Filling your pages with keywords is a clever and necessary idea but overdoing it can spell disaster for your website. When Google analayses a site it first strips out any common words such as "and" and "but". If you put in your keywords too many times then Google will mistake them for these common words and delete them. Having all your keywords deleted is not a great idea.

4. Do you concentrate on style over substance?

Have you been sold on a choice of pretty templates or been mesmerised by graphical tricks that are the latest in website design? If so, then you fallen for the style over substance con. You have a pretty site but it is also pretty useless and does nothing to get visitors it may attract to stay or come back.

5. Do you have a "fire and forget" website?

Have you created a website some years ago and left it to fester? Is the last news or blog item over a year ago? When was it last updated or is it gathering cyber dust? If you've answered "yes" to any of these questions then you have a stale website. This tells any customers that happen to find it that you just don't care.

6. Did you get someone else to do it?

Did you get a friend, relative or agency to create our website design for you? If you did then you committed the cardinal website design sin. You handed over control of a key part of your business to someone else. What other critical part of your business would you risk in this way? None, I bet. To succeed your business website needs your passion, knowledge and personality stamped all over it and only you can do this.

You can still save your website and your business if you change the focus of your website design to focus on you and your customers. The focus on your customers should answer their concerns, worries and problems and they should be reassured and excited by the focus on you as you reveal your talent, knowledge, personality and passion.