In today's competitive Internet marketplace, there are more websites than ever vying for that valuable 1st page real estate on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. Getting your website to move up even a few positions on these indexes can make a monumental difference to your traffic and sales. And what many breeders fail to realize is that the key to upward momentum is right at their fingertips.
As a website designer, creative writer and search engine optimization specialist working for cat and dog breeders for more than 14 years, I have noticed that most breeders make the following oversights with their websites. Once these small issues have been corrected, these websites often see a 200% increase in traffic, and move up on the Google ladder dramatically. I am happy to share these tips with you, and hope they help you with your online marketing efforts.
The Three Top Website Mistakes Cat and Dog Breeders Make
- Not Jumping on the Social Media Bandwagon.
Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest and other "social media" websites are often avoided by breeders. Sometimes there is a misconception that these services will draw the attention of "internet trolls" and "anti-breeding" fanatics.
Thankfully, social media websites allow you to have a great deal of control over the content, and comments posted on your accounts. These sites offer you a fantastic way of connecting with and keeping in touch with past, present and future customers. They are also a great way to capitalize on word-of-mouth advertising.
You can connect your website to your social media accounts, and promoted your website on your social media accounts. If you are not all that computer saavy, hire a professional social media manager to take care of it for you. A small investment into social media will make a huge difference to your online sales.
- Not using your photos and videos to their full advantage.If there is one thing dog and cat breeders have in abundance, it's fantastic photos of dogs and puppies, cats and kittens. These images are "online gold", and should always be "optimized" to their full advantage.
Here's how to do it:- Be sure to crop, resize and resample (reduce the dots per inch ratio) your photos before adding them to your website. An image displayed on a website should never be larger in dimensions than 600 pixels wide, and should be compressed so that the dots per inch ration (dpi or resolution) is 75 dpi. Many people think that pictures need to be saved at a higher resolution to look better, but this is a fallacy. High resolution images are only needed if printing an image.
So remember: Crop, resample and resize BEFORE you upload. Save your photos as jpeg (.jpg) files. - Make use of "alt tags", file names and captions.
Every photo on your website has a file name, and every photo on your website should also make use of the alt tag feature, and sport a caption. Search engines weigh photos heavily when determining how relevant your website is for a certain search term, so be sure to take the extra time to make your photos count.
Alt tags are simply a feature intended to help visually impaired visitors understand what is on the page they are viewing. So, if your photo shows a Black Labrador Retriever puppy, and you are located in Phoenix, Arizona, your alt tag might look like this: alt="Picture of black Labrador Retriever puppy from Suzie's Labradors in Phoenix, AZ"
File names for photos are often misused. Instead of naming an image 008ldk.jpg, try to name each image for what it is. For example, a photo of a black Labrador Retriever puppy should be named: black-labrador-retriever-puppy.jpg. That tells the search engines, again, what the photo depicts, and helps make your site relevant for people searching for a "Black Labrador Retriever Puppy".
Captions are important, too. A "caption" is a line of text placed beneath an image that tells the viewer what the images is of. They can be as descriptive as you like, but be sure to try and include the keyphrase you hope to rank for, as long as that is what the image is of. For example, for the image mentioned above, your caption could be: "George is an adorable Black Labrador Retriever puppy. He is currently available for sale." - Don't delete your photos once your puppies or kittens have sold.
You wouldn't throw away real gold, so don't dispose of your "website gold". Keep all of your pictures - just move them to a "gallery" page. Little do most breeders realize, their photos get links and likes from visitors. Remove a photo file, and you lose out on those valuable (and very natural) incoming links, and you also create broken links, which Google hates.
Think of your website as a constantly growing garden of great content, and make sure you don't weed out the flowers. :-) - Got some cute kitten or puppy videos? Post them on YouTube, then display them on your website. Videos draw the interest of visitors, and links from YouTube are better than Gold - they are Platinum.
- Be sure to crop, resize and resample (reduce the dots per inch ratio) your photos before adding them to your website. An image displayed on a website should never be larger in dimensions than 600 pixels wide, and should be compressed so that the dots per inch ration (dpi or resolution) is 75 dpi. Many people think that pictures need to be saved at a higher resolution to look better, but this is a fallacy. High resolution images are only needed if printing an image.
- Not using web page file names to your advantage.
Every page in your website has a unique "address" that is called a "URL". It looks like this: "http://www.website.com/file-name.html". The URL for every page in your website is very important. You should try to give each page a URL that includes the search term that the page is relevant for. For example, if you were to create a page that is all about grooming Labrador Retrievers, you should name the file: grooming-labrador-retrievers.html.The page title should match the URL file name, too.
This is a great way to be sure that Google knows EXACTLY what the page is about, and can have a very positive effect on your site's position. It also helps you to rank for all kinds of different search terms related to your website.
NEVER change the URL for a web page! This is just like changing your phone number without telling your customers, or having it updated in the yellow pages. So if your pages are not named as suggested above, just leave them alone.
In a perfect world, you would have followed the instructions above with existing pages in your site, but don't rename them if they are already doing well. Just use the naming trick for new pages you create going forward. Search engines "index" every page in your website, and if you change the URL, the search engines will still send visitors to the "old address" for the page. This annoys your users, and creates "401 errors" which count against your website in the great scheme of things.
