Basics of A Website Tips&Tricks

[Shalisk]

You all share your knowlege with me, so I figured I would try to return the favor.

I see lots of people asking for opinions on their website, and have had a couple people poke me in the last couple days about their site, so instead of doing it 10 times and telling people similar things I figured I would do it in a thread. This way Tips and Things I learned building and selling sites will be there for everyone, and anyone that has tips of their own can add them, and if they have questions Ill awnser best I can or someone else can.


I will try to arrange by topic.
I will try to give examples and expand so your website can be better
Legend/Abbv to know:
SE = Search Engine (Google/Yahoo/Bing)
SER= Search Engine Ranking
SEO= Search Engine Optimization
Keyword= Words people find you in google for
Keywords = Words SE's THINK you are ranking for.
Black Hat SEO = Think.....'the bad way' to do SEO
White Hat SEO = Think "The right way" to do SEO

So without much bluster here we go:

Getting found:
SE's love lots of things. I am not a mad genius nor do I claim to know googles algorythem. If I knew that I would be a billionaire No one does but 'mother google' ...

Mother Google loves lots of things, most importantly she loves people that use her to find things. So everything (almost) she does is aimed at making sure that people want to use her MORE. It's not nice to fool Mother Google.

Things Mother Google loves:
CONTENT! Fresh, New, ORIGIONAL content. Do not cut and past things from other sites, Mother Google knows if you do. Do not steal other peoples pictures, or descriptions, Mother Google knows this too and she will slap you in the form of bad search engine rankings.

Mother HATES people that try to trick her too. When you use Black Hat SEO like keyword stuffing, she will punish you, she will punish you HARD, websites have gone from #1 to not even being listed for things like this in the past. Below is a example of both 'natural keyword usage' that google likes (white hat) and Keyword stuffing that she hates our key word is "dog training..."

"Dog training is very important to dogs, training them is hard. When learning how to do dog training, it is important to have a dog and to train it. Dog trainnig lessons can be expensive but its important to train your dog and therefore buying dog training lessons can pay off."

See how un-natural that sounds? how exesive? Thats bad. Somthing proper would be like:

"So your dog is misbehaving? Thats horrible, how many shoes have you lost? I have lost atleast four pairs. Enter dog training! Its a valuable tool to get your canine companion to behave. When you have proper teaching and you use enforcement on your companion his lessons will stick, they can be pricy at times but the time you spend togeather will be invaluable so do not under estimate the power of dog training, you will regret it if you do"

This natural flow of talking is the way 'mother google' likes things to be. You are not trying to force the word to be used more and therefore she knwos you are providing content that isnt just "Dog training" 500 times so you rank better. You will get bonus 'points' for this.

Also, notice that it was written with a diffrent tone, playful and 'fun' this is natural, and it also goes a long way in showing you did not steal your information from another site, more points there.

If you DO steal from a site, google will punish the younger site for stealing.

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Mother Google like's size. Sorry guys, mother google belives bigger is better...to a point.

A web page with 50-100 words simply does not impress mother google. The magic number is 450-500. This is how many words you should strive for. Minimum 1000 is better, 1200 is pushing it a bit. 1500 is just a pain for anyone to read.

Mother Google loves pictures to. 2-3 pictures per page would be awsome, especially slightly to the right of the font and text.

Want to impress Mother Google and your viewers more? Make those pictures clickable so they go to OTHER pages! Put links to other page in your website IN the text you are writing!

That brings me to another topic:
Web site size. 25 pages BARE MINIMUM. 50 pages is 'fair' 100+ Is great. Add a new page every week or every month after you hit 25. Because if you leave your webpage alone too long, she thinks youare outdated, no longer being updated, and will stop giving you 'points' for content freshness.

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Behind the scenes:
ANyone who has built a website knows about keywords, and meta words and all that. Your keyword line should be 4-6 'keywords' long...more than that ....you guessed it, mother google gets mad. Think of it like a wish list too long and you are greedy, you will be found anyway. More on this in a moment. Be sure that your FIRST WORD is what that PAGE (not your SITE) is about continuing our 'dog training' example:

Good keyword list
"Dog Training, Clicker Training, Positive Reinforcement, Shutzhund, Benefits of"

Bad Keyword list
"Marketable Dog Training, Clicker Dog Training, Positive reinforcement dog training, Shutzhund dog training, why do I train my dog, marshmellows, peanutbutter bad for dogs, movies about paper airplanes, lipstick"

Things you may have noticed, in the good keyword list, there are 'partials' or 'incomplete' words. That is because google does not care. it will link it automatially. For example if someone searched for "Shutzhund" I would be found. If they search for "Dog Training" I will be found if they search for "Shutzhund Dog Training" I will be found. I did not need "Shutzhund dog training" because I already have 'dog training' same with 'Benefits of" "Benefits of Shutzhund Dog Training" is a great phrase for me!

The bad keyword list is huge, repeats itself, has things that are not relevant to the page at hand, google will hit you for this.

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Linking to OTHER sites:

This one is tricky.
Like I said, google LOVES to help people that use her, she cares not so much about your site, so if you have links to RELEVANT AND QUALITY information that are not on your site, link OUT to another site, but always make it so it opens in another tab or window, you dont want them to leave your site forever. Also make sure you dont do it too much. 3-6 times for a 25 page website is PLENTY.

A example would be after you write YOUR page on the origins of salt soap (for example) you could (if you wanted) link out to wikipedias salt soap page, or a website dedicated to soaps history. Dont link yourself to compitition, thats just silly.

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Spelling and Grammer and Retention.

I know, laugh it up, my posts are rife with grammar and spelling errors. But my web pages are not. I run them through wordpad checking and then another site, then I post it. Google does not care about errors (too much) but she does care about how long people stay on a site, if people leave because of bad spelling you lose points.

Things that Make or Break your retention:
Graphics. (Too many, Not enough, GLARING COLOR BLEEDING EYE DEATH! (Yellow on white, pink on black, etc)
Links (Not enough, Too many, Hard to find)
Content (recycled, not new, cant navigate to new stuff)
Navigation (Where are those pages about whta this soap is made of?)
Offensive content
Ads (too many? Intrusive?)

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Lets try to move away from the bones and structure and move into what can HELP your webpage be successful!

Lets start with somthing everyone knows atleast a little about:
Social media.

Its all over. Tweets, Toots, Face book, foot page, head space, four square, reddit, green-it, blue-it, whatever you call it, its out there. People use it. People LOVE it. So harness that power.

Use pin-it to allow people to share pictures on your site, they WILL come to visit.
Add facebook likes, google plus, post images with links on Reddit, have a facebook page post your new soaps and everything else, post 1-3 times a week, tweet new ideas, ask for suggestions, tweet about new soaps you made or post about commercial soap recalls!

HARNESS THIS POWER and you WILL increse your traffic and your sales.

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Sales.

This is what everyone wants. It is what you are building this site for. Its the final click everyone wants to hear. Cha Ching!

Well, that comes with time, and paitence. These are the tips I have for you when selling items in your store:

Do not. Ever. Never. EVER. AND THE ROCK MEANS EVER! Try to SELL or push someone into your store from your homepage.
NO NO NO!

Google hates it. I hate it. Most other people hate it. Its almost as annoying as adds or popups onthe home page and it will make you lose sales. WHY are you selling me somthing you have told me NOTHING about?

If I am a NEW customer, I need to learn, I want to see, and read, and LEARN......if I am a repeat customer I KNOW where to go to get what I want.

Dont pressure your new people.

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[Shalisk]

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Have pages for your product.
Having a store is not enough. Have a page dedicated to various products, if you can not write enough about a SINGLE product (Your Sea Salt Lemon Soap write a page about the GROUP (Sea Salt Soaps) Somthing like this:

"Sea salt soaps are made from < blahlahblah> and feel like <blah> and for some people have <blah> if you would like to try some of our sea salt soaps, click here" and then LINK to a page where people can buy (after reading a short description of) your sea salt soaps...Its called pre-selling. People are used to it, without it they feel naked and vulnerable. Infact you have it ALL the time in your life and dont even know it. What do you reach for when you go to the store, the stuff you heard of and know a bit about, or the stuff in thta questionable can? Exactly. TV, Radio, Bilboards, have all PRESOLD you to the idea of things you buy, your products are no diffrent. Even the 'off brand' pre-sell you. You are IN THE STORE that the off brand is owned by! Dont just go "Store' and have pictures of stuff people can buy.

Describe each one (25-50 words. 6-10 to a page) and have a 'click here to order' type thing somewhere!

If you do this for all 4 of your soap types you have killed MANY birds!

Think of this:
You have 12 diffrent soaps, in each of 4 catagorys.

6 products to a page.
A intro, 50 word description, pictures
Thats 8 pages of 350-400 words that google WILL FIND and that she will LOVE you for making.
Its content.
Its fresh
Its more pages
Its more finds in google
It looks better to your end user, its a win win all around!

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Clickable picture:

For example, if you have a picture of a soap, make a page that is about that soap (not just the buy it page) and have each picture of that soap LINK to that soap. And if you use that soap name in a page, make that name (once or MAYBE twice a page total) link to the page with more info. People love info.

More pages.
The more pages you have the better. The more content the more pages get found by google, the more pages that get found the more obscure things you get found FOR, the more obscure things you get found for the easier you rank for 'harder' words.

Example:
True story, I had a vampire/zombie website, and the first thing I was found for was: "That movie where the zombie loves the girl and becomes alive again" (Warm Bodies BTW) that was never one of my keywords, but I was found for it because in one of my pages I had somthing that said somthing like "You could watch a movie where love for a girl can make a zombie human again" Google knows to mess with word structure sometimes to help people find what they want.

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TIER your pages. And what I mean by that is that everything MUSSSSSST link to something else, back a page, AND to another page. You should go 3 deep, maybe four. Let me give you an example...(Forgive the poor graphics Im using text.)
..................................Homepage
........................................|
..................................Salt Soap
............| .........................| ......................|
.....Salt Soap............ ...Sea Salt ..........History Of Salt Soap

That is your basic Tier. Now: Salt soap should link both BACK to soap, and BACK to the homepage and FORWARD to ....lets say a page about the making of salt soap. It allows your user to explore and find more on your page and thus increase your rankings, increase your views, and increase your sales. You also could link forward t sales page from here.

I can hear it now: "But Shalisk, thats a tier 3 page, why would I want to try to sell ONLY on those?" Well my dear reader, because THOSE are what you are going to be found for first most times, you will have more tier 3 pages than anything else. Because your 'soap' (T2 page) is going to have salt soaps (t3) and History of salt soap, diffrent kinds of salt soap, pictures of salt soap its going to have 5-10 PAGES of salt soap. With keywords you will rank for fast, and draw people into your pages....
500+ words about the various types of soaps, why handmade is better, etc, and in that I would have links for example when I talk about "Signature Soaps" that would be a link to where they can see, learn about, and purchase my signature soaps (You can use anchors for this) and at the bottom of the page have a link that says somthing like "Or you can view all our soaps for sale here." and it links to your store page. Never pressure to sell, people that want to buy will find a way. People that want to learn, will appreate it and come back again and tell friends.
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You.

Yup. YOU influance people.
So have a page about you. Right up at the top "About me" or whatever you want. Have it be about you. What you do, why you do it, family, job, your history, people want to know they are dealing with a PERSON.

CONTACT INFO
Have yourself reahable for questions, create a q/a page, commonly asked questions (With links to pages !)

And (For now) the last bit of advice I have for you, is HUGE, I do NOT see many websites with this...and WITHOUT THIS and read this carefully:
Google.
Will.
Kick
Your
Rump.

And that is a PRIVACY POLICY
There are standard. THEY MUST BE USED because of 'legal' I am not going to get into it im not a lwayer but google will drop you like a hot potato without it if they find it and you WONT get back on. ESPECIALLY if you use adsense.

If ANYONE needs a copy of a default Privacy policy, I have included one in the third post its from my vampire and zombie site, you are free to edit it and use it. Its pretty standard and can be found anywhere. Be sure to change my name, or website to yours and you should be fine.

Post any questions and the fourth post will be used for q/a and ill edit and fix this as needed
Good luck to you all.
-Shalisk

 

[Shalisk]

Below is a privacy policy from my site, I have removed the website and such and replaced it with ##### so when you edit this, do a 'find and replace' for ##### and replace it with proper words for your site. (namely your sites name and web adress)


Some of this (mainly the last part) may not apply but if you keep it in it covers your butt even more.









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[Shalisk]

---Helpful Links

Added:
********
http://www.google.com/analytics

This tool is GREAT and invaluable, if you need help after reading how to use it from the page, I wil help you set it up. This tool will tell you:
What you are being found for.
What pages people are going to the most.
How long they are staying for.
Where they are from.
Where they go from the page they came in on.
And SO MUCH MORE.
Its free, and its great.

 

[Jencat]

Thank you for taking the time to share all this information with us!

 

[Seawolfe]

Wow thanks so much! This is hugely valuable.

 

[KristaY]

Holy smokes, Shalisk! This is invaluable! Thank you for taking the time to write all that out. :clap:

 

[Shalisk]

Not a problem, I really don't mind. If you guys have any questions or want to know more don't hesitate to post here, and I will either expand on a topic or add a new one if I know.

Please keep in mind that at SOME POINT this information might become a bit dated, but I have found that while googles algorythem changes often (atleast twice a year) those 'rules' have held true.

If I don't know how to awnser a question or things like that, I will see if I can find the awnser, I am generally one not to make random guesses I am glad you all like it and hope it helps