Creating a website that will make money online is exciting and fun while at the same time daunting and scary.

Websites are powerful incredible story tellers and it’s your job to use this new technology to create an incredible combination of multiple media words, pictures, photos, illustrations, graphics, animation, video, and sound to tell a story like has never been told before. Your story can include polls, surveys, places to comment, and links to get more information. The possibilities are endless.

There are so many things to consider. What will you sale? What do you want your website visitor to remember about your website? What action do you want your website visitor to take while they are on your website? Who do you want to sell to? How will you make sure the right parts of your website get noticed? What types of media will you use on your website? How will you draw your web visitor into your website? You would be overwhelmed at all the possibilities!

There are a couple things to remember when building a website.

• Keep your users attention.
  
• Don’t confuse them.
  
• Don’t bore them.
  
• Don’t allow them to lose interest in your product or service.
  

Have you ever noticed all the signs around you?

Stop, Slow Down, Don’t Run, No Parking, Walk, Be a Good Neighbor, Wash your Hands, No Spitting. Have you ever wondered what makes you accept one and reject the others?

The reason I ask is because we get hit with them every day on the internet.

• Read me!
  
• Buy me!
  
• Click me!
  
• Sign up for me!
  

Of course, you are not forced to follow any of those instructions. You decide what appeals to you and what does not appeal to you. You are in control. You can hit the back button at any moment. But have you ever wondered what causes you to hit the back button on one website and the contact us on another?

The Internet is a giant spider web filled with websites that are

• Fascinating
  
• Boring
  
• Eye-opening
  
• Scary
  
• Beautiful
  
• Ugly
  
• Superficial
  
• Complicated
  
• Hideous
  
• Brilliant
  
• Stupid
  
• Distasteful
  
• Unintelligible
  
• Confusing
  
• and more
  

At every moment in time, more and more ugly , shocking, gruesome, dull, exotic, and wonderful websites are being added to the internet.

Web visitors find these websites in many different ways. One way would be by way of the search engines and when they find one that doesn’t create a desire in them they threw it back. We are a have to have it now world and if your website does not create the desire in the web visitor to have it now they’ve thrown it back and moved on to the next website.

Now think back on the last time you were looking to purchase something online or even for information. What were you looking for? How did you search for that information? What made you pay attention? What made you move to the next website? What made you take action? What made you look more? What excited you? What made you tell a friend? What made you purchase a product?

As a Web visitor, it can be difficult to know why you choose one website over another. It’s a subconscious feeling and you actually have no idea why you purchase one product over another. You also have no idea why you can change at any point in time. What you want now is not what you wanted 10 years ago. What you want today at this moment can be totally different then what you want tomorrow.

It’s for this reason that you have to know who you are building your website for. You want to make sure that every piece of your website from the photos to the content and colors have been created to reach the needs, wants, and desires of your intended audience and make them take notice. You have to build a website that will not only stand out from the crowd but one that will excite and interest your web visitors.

Your website has to have clarity, spark and meaning. The design needs to be clear and the action you want your web visitor to take should be obvious. If your web visitor becomes confused or if your website is complicated, or unintelligible, you’ll lose your visitor’s attention.

What’s the purpose of your website? If you don ‘t know, your website probably isn’t clear. Who is your website designed for? If you don’t know then your website probably isn’t clear.

Does your website wind and weave with no clear direction or focus? You can fix that problem by writing down your websites key objectives. You should be able to tell your website visitor what your websites is about and what you want them to do in under 3 seconds.

Have you ever noticed that when you buy a new gadget you are so excited about opening it up that you rip open the package, ignore the manual and immediately start pressing buttons.

The last thing you want to do is take the time to read the instructions.

Yet I run across websites daily where website owners feel that by having something different they are able to stand out from the crowd. I don’t want to have to read the manual to figure out how to use your website.

Please don’t make me read a how to manual to use your website!

Respect my time and be happy that I am spending time on your website.

And most of all make your website like the package with the little toy in it. Everything on that package, every photo, every word of content is there for one reason and only one reason to get me to purchase that product.

If I buy a new product and it is so complicated that I have to stop what I’m doing and take time to read the manual, I’ll assume the designer of the product wasn’t a very good designer and chances are I will not be happy with the product.

How much worse will it be if I have to stop in the middle of my purchase and figure out how to use your website?

When someone lands on your website there not wanting to read instructions on how to use it, most people don’t have the time or the patience.

Everything on your website should be there for one reason and one reason only. To get the website visitor to take some form of action. Anything that causes the web visitor to stumble is a problem.

If you have a photo on your website it should add something to your websites message. Other words, if you take the photo away it should take away from your message. Everything on your website should be there for a purpose and that purpose should be telling your website visitor why his or her life would be better, more complete, more productive, and happier if they owned what it is you’re selling.

Before, if someone didn’t like your website they left, went back to Google and did another search and bought from your competition. With Google’s new algo changes you may find your competition’s website is not only selling more products then you but is also ranked above yours due to your websites inability to convert website visitors into web customers.

It goes without saying that all content needs to be original, quality and on one specific topic per page. You will need to work your keywords into the content and use as many synonyms related to the keywords as you can without harming your message. You also want to use the exact keyword phrase you are trying to rank for in the first sentence of your main content, as well as variations throughout the content and once again in the last sentence. Also bold the first time the keyword is used in the first paragraph on the first page.

If you have a local business try and fit the business address into the content, if possible.

When I’m setting up a site from scratch I’ll normally start by doing a search on Google for the main keyword and looking at the competitions websites to get an idea for not only the layout but for the content.

Let’s get started!

SEO Watch Dog Site Layout

The site will have 14 top navigation links that will go site wide. All other content will be posted in site blog. Main navigation will link with EXACT keyword phrases specific to each page. URL’s will also have EXACT match URL’s and home page will be called “SEO” instead of Home.

Homepage Content

The homepage content will incorporate EXACT keyword phrases from other pages to be used as anchor text, linking back to each respective page. I’ll populate the home page with snippets of text from other pages to make it easier and quicker to get started.

Heading Tags

The H1 and H2 tags should be used on every page with more than 500 words of text.

Footer, I’ll use the footer for deep linking and the Links and Location of the Footer will remain consistent for all pages.

______________________________

Redundant On-Page Elements

These elements will be added on every page of the website below the main content section.

Deep Link Tag

Add the following paragraph as the last paragraph within the main content section.

Increase your bottom line with SEO Watch Dog: a search engine optimization company specializing in SEO services.

“Words Used By Visitors….” I want to use a people who liked this page also liked these pages tag that would be unique to each individual page.

Location Tag

I am going to move into the US state by state so I will add a locations, cities and counties with zip codes to the footer area.

SEO Watch Dog serves the following States, Cities, Zip Codes and Counties:

Location 1, Location 2, Location 3 (state once, city, zip)

URL: http://www.seowatchdog.org/

Content

All Pages need between 300 to 1,500 words, pages should no look uniformed when it comes to content.

Content Heading (H1 TAG): All content should have H1 tags

Placement Instructions: The H1 tag will be placed directly above the main content.

Content Sub-Heading (H2 TAG): Pages with over 500 words of text should use the h2 tag.

Placement Instructions: The H2 tag will be about 2/3rds of the way through main content.

ALT TAG: Main images on every page should match the page topic.

Placement Instructions: ALT Tag will be placed on the logo image as well as all main page images on the site but text will depend on page content.

Having a stale website with outdated content can have an overall negative effect on your website performance in Google. Google is no longer leaving it up to the website owner to make sure that their continent is up-to-date. If they find one page on your website with out of date content thy can penalize the whole website. I can say this for a fact because we had it happen to a client and we contacted Google and found out the reason. This was just before the release of Panda. My understanding is you have to wait for the next time panda is run if you get hit with a penalty now. Panda appears to be run every couple of months.

If your content is not up to date or has not been updated in some time I would get on it immediately. Panda and the algorithm is being fine-tuned and tweaked all the time, just because you got missed once doesn’t mean you’ll get missed the next time.

Keeping your website updated is good for both you and Google. If your website is outdated it gives the appearance of a company that is out of touch.

Your website is never finished it has to be constantly updated.

Panda changed the game because of the high number of sites that were hit. A lot of sites felt the effect but weren’t directly hit. For example a website that got most it’s links and traffic from Hub Pages would have felt like they’d been hit, when Hub Pages got hit. A lot of the strategies that were used in the past aren’t working anymore. A lot of companies are panicking and starting to throw things at the wall to see what sticks, the biggest problem with this is Google only runs the algorithm every couple months.

Google’s algorithm is like a soup and every once in a while they threw in a special spice to add a little flavor. But it’s too expensive to use all the time.

People had gotten really good at ranking websites so Google had to change the game. Sites that were created to funnel traffic elsewhere have been devalued because they don’t deliver value to Google’s visitors. When looking at all the changes that are currently taking place you really need to look at every update since Caffeine. Caffeine allowed Google to become more effective at indexing websites. But there’ve been so many updates, for example you’ve got the Mayday update that focused on long tail keywords, I’m going to just stick with the Panda update.

So…What’s changed?

Panda is all about quality. Google NOW cares about the look and feel of your website and the content.

Most people who have ranked in the top 10 for a competitive keyword knows that in doing so you are giving the impression to the Google searcher that you have Google’s approval. It’s a real credibility booster. Now it appears that Google cares about your credibility, since they are in affect vouching for you.

Google’s forcing companies to improve the users experience and those companies are reaping the benefits and not just in more traffic from Google but in increased dollars as well. Understand that a 10% increase in traffic yields the exact same dollar amount as a 10% increase in conversion. The end result and money saved as well as the dollars spent to implement are all better on the conversion side. I am trying to say that it is less expensive to increase conversions than it is to increase traffic and increasing conversion allows you to spend less and get more out of your traffic, marketing and advertising.

Okay, I need to slow down a bit, let’s get back to Panda and what’s changed. Then I’m going to go through your website and tell you what needs to change on your website as well as what types of offsite optimization you need to do.

Remember that a website is never finished. The best sites are the ones that have lots of quality content and are updated daily.

There is no reason to monitor the indexing process because of how quickly Google appears to index. They also seem to index nearly everything. Your website ranking well depends on a lot of factors, none of which should be an indexing problem.

You should optimize your home page for your main keyword and several secondary keywords because it displays both article titles and content snippets.

Title. The keyword should appear in the title, preferably towards the front.

URL. Make sure the keyword appears in the URL for the page or post.

Make sure the keyword appears in the first paragraph and a couple times in the body. Your keyword has to match the topic of the article and should never overshadow the article. And always remember what makes you unique, you aren’t the first to cover this topic. A website filled with nothing but content is boring, you have to add a little bit of you and your staffs personality into the website. Injecting your personal stories into the website will set you apart from the crowd.

Share a few small details about your personal life. You want to share enough that you seem like a real person. This increases your readership, increases the time people spend on your site and increases your ranking. Relate the content, even the personalized content, to the overall theme of the site. You can share customer’s stories and experiences that relate to your business. At one time everyone wanted articles with round about 500 words. Now it would appear that websites with content that is uniformed in size can negatively impact your website.

Create articles that range in size from 200 words long up to 1500. Of course don’t stretch the article out if you have nothing to say.