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.

About a year or so ago there was a marketing method so effective the United States government had to step in and shut it down!
The marketing method was people building blogs and recommending other people’s services. Basically you would have an affiliate site selling a product; I would build a blog and talk about how wonderful your product was. Anyone that landed on my blog would see me talking about how great your product was and they would then go to your website and make a purchase. You would then pay me a percent for sending you the client.

This method worked so well; that the United States government had to step in and say you had to let people know if you were affiliated in anyway with the product you were recommending. The whole ordeal went something like that anyway. A marketing method that worked so good the United States government had to step in and stop it!

I was talking with some friends the other day about this method and how it is still being used today but just in a different way. Of course you first need to understand why the method worked so well!

Many years ago I was told about an experiment where they took three monkeys and some bananas and put them in a cage.

If any of the monkeys touched the banners it would shock the other two monkeys. It didn’t take long for the two monkeys getting shocked to figure out what was going on and attack any monkey that went near the bananas.

A new monkey was added to the group and one of the original three removed. When the new monkey headed for the bananas the other two attacked him. So the new monkey never tried to touch the bananas again. However one of the originals were again removed and replaced with a new monkey. Now only one of the three remaining monkeys had ever been shocked or even knew what happened when you touched the bananas. Yet both joined in on beating the new monkey for touching the banners.

The test went on and eventually none of the monkeys were the original three, yet none of the monkeys would touch the bananas. They even removed the mechanism that shocked the monkeys, but none of the monkeys touched the bananas! They didn’t know why they didn’t touch the banners, they just didn’t do it. We follow and do what the group does. When in a group setting, you look to see what everyone else is doing, to see what is and what is not the correct thing for you to do. It’s rooted in your DNA!
You want to fit in, and you want to belong.

For this reason when you are in a social situation you look to others to see how you should behave. It’s something you do unconsciously!

There was a study done where a person pretended to have a seizure. The study showed that if someone was by themselves there as an 85% chance that person would stop and help. However, if there was a crowd of people there was only a 35% chance that someone would stop and help. People looked to see what everyone else was doing before doing something on their own.

Let’s say you wanted to use the above on your website. One way of doing this would be setting a rating system for your products. The first thing you want to make sure of is that you put the rating information on the product page. Otherwise the consumer has to click to see the rating. By waiting until the second screen to show the rating information you risk losing the customers attention. Keep in mind that the more reviews you have, the stronger the impact on the website visitor.

I was told about a study that was done in 2007; they wanted to see if recommendations increased sales.

They ran some split test on two different websites to compare products and services. For the product they used a digital camera shop and for the service they used a tourist destination website. According to them their split test showed someone was 20% more likely to purchase a camera with a review then a camera without a review. The travel destination showed a 10% increase of reviews over non-reviewed destination and a 20% increase if there was a photo included with the review.

In addition to the reviews you could have something like “Most People That Visited This Page Bought this Camera” in the right side bar. If you wanted to take it a step further and could figure out a way to add some graphs and charts into the reviews then you would really be talking to the subconscious mind. Data, charts, graphs or statistics done correctly help build trust and make the end-user feel more comfortable about his or her decision.

The more information you have about the person who wrote the review the bigger the impact they will have. You want to give a sketched out mini persona of the person who wrote the review. This makes the review more powerful. Review sites become more powerful when we know something more about the reviewer then just their name and date of incident.