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We realize there are many website design options available for you to choose from. Whether you decide to work with us, try the do-it-yourself route or go with another website designer, these are some things that you should research to help ensure your Internet marketing investment is worth every penny spent.
Free Website Services
You can use a free website design service but as we are sure you already have learned in life - NOTHING IS FREE! Many of these types of services are using your website to place their advertisements or they are selling the contact information gathered from the visitors to your site. Do you wish to have your customer's inundated with spam and junk mail because of their interest in one of your puppies?
Website Designers
Many website designers offer small website packages without a full explanation of what you are getting for that apparent small price tag. Three to 10 page websites are generally made as static pages.
This can be an inexpensive way to begin an Internet presence for your breeding business as well as a way to learn how to work with HTML code. But you need to understand that static websites require you to work with the individual pages to make any updates. Using an HTML Editor, you can edit or add text and images. You will then be required to upload that updated document to the web server via FTP. As breeders, we understand the number of edits and updates required when trying to place a litter of puppies. If you are not comfortable making such updates to HTML documents, web designers do offer maintenance services for an additional fee. Please keep this in mind when contemplating purchasing a static website.
Search Engine Optimization
Often times we hear from customers how the whole "Search Engine Things" has been too confusing to understand. We explain - In plain English - How SEO works and why it is so important for your website and your business. Web designers include SEO setup in their packages but often times leave out that SEO must be maintained.
The line, "If you build it, they will come" does not pertain to your website. Simply uploading your site will not bring customers knocking on your virtual - or physical door. Your website needs to be designed from the ground up with the appropriate SEO requirements.
SEO is all about relevancy. It starts with the keywords entered in your META tags on your website pages. These keywords are those words that people type into their search engine to find what they are looking for. Your website title, page titles, content text, image text tags and site description must also use those same keywords. Then there are the links! Links to your website and from your website are a must for good Search Engine ranking. They too must be relevant to those same keywords.
Once all of these SEO requirements are in place, your website is submitted to Search Engines to be "spidered". This means Search Engines will send out a script that reads through your website and looks at all of those pieces listed above. These search engines crawl through billions of websites and web pages looking for the keywords and phrases typed into the search bar to find relevant and exact matches to websites to pull up first. The more reliant - the higher the ranking.
Over the last few years, these spidering scripts have evolved and continue to add new requirements based on the quickly changing Internet. One recent addition is the need for updated content. As explained above, this can become cumbersome on a static website, but a requirement to keep your site with a high ranking.
Why We Suggest The Dynamic Route
We do normally suggest to our customers that they go the dynamic route. This is for several reasons. The vast number of dog breeder websites on the Internet today, as well as the other canine focused sites make a dynamic website the perfect choice for breeders. As explained above, you ideally want your website to be listed on the first page when someone searches for your breed of dog/puppies. This can be very difficult to do when competing with large sites like PuppyFind.com and NextDayPets.com which are filled with a vast amount of ever changing content.
The Internet has evolved from a mostly static design to a dynamic domination. Search Engines have also followed that route. A dynamic website has a backend web editor that allows you to easily add updates and changes on the fly, fill our website with an unlimited number of pages filled with reliant content and NOT require you to understand HTML code! A dynamic site truly is the best investment in the long run.
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