I examine a lot of dog breeder websites. And nearly all the websites for dog breeders I look at are performing poorly. Why? Because of five breeder website mistakes that I see sabotaging their performance online.
Most breeders think that it’s just a matter of putting a pretty site up and the rest will just naturally follow.
It’s not your fault if you think that! A lot of us are a bit long in the tooth to have been taught anything about computers at school.
The good news is you don’t have to be a geek to figure this out!
Here’s how Dog Breeder Websites Start Out Wrong…
Being Seduced by Free Dog Breeder Websites
The typical breeder thinks “Okay, I need a website, so I’ll go on Wix, Weebly or GoDaddy drag-and-drop page builder because it’s cheap and easy, and at least I can do it myself.”
And the breeder website templates do turn out some beautiful sites. The problem is, while these breeder websites look gorgeous, they don’t actually rank in the search results. So no-one gets to see them. And if no-one gets to see them, then they won’t bring in inquiries. And isn’t that the whole point of having websites for breeders in the first place?
Thinking a Paid Breeder Website Builder is the Answer
Smart breeders realize they need a successful website. When the cheap and easy option inevitably fails, many fall into the trap of believing hiring a paid breeder website builder to do it for them will solve the problem. They might expend a couple of thousand dollars for a developer to build their dog breeder website. And again though the breeder website design looks pretty, it again just sits there and does nothing!
The Five Common Mistakes on Dog Breeder Websites
So why does this happen? It’s because of five mistakes I commonly see on websites for dog breeders.
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Dog Breeder Websites Under Outside Control
The first mistake dog breeders make is relinquishing control of their website to somebody else. When you hire a developer to build your website they may not share the login details with you. That means you can’t access the “backend” of your site, or even know what the administration side of your website looks like!
In effect you’re relying on a developer for every little sentence change, alteration, or new photo you want to add. In this situation you don’t really have control of your website and it’s very hard to get things done or changed on it. Plus you have to pay the developer and wait on their availability for every little thing.
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Dog Breeder Websites With Hardly Any Content
The second mistake is websites for breeders that have very little content or information on them. Even if you get a developer to build your website, understand that they are good at building websites. The content or information part is up to you. Developers don’t know anything about dog breeding. They don’t know anything about your breed! So you can’t expect them to create relevant content for your breeder website. And copying and pasting from other websites is also punished by Google, so it needs to be your own original information on there.
Like it or not, creating content for your website is up to YOU.
Google is an information engine. It likes dishing up relevant information to online queries. If your website is not full of good information, relevant to your breed, that matches the queries your customers are searching for information on online, then it has low relevance in Google’s eyes. It’s just going to be crickets for you. And most breeder websites are like this. They typically only have an “about us” section, a “current litters” page, and an application or contact page. And that’s it!
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Websites for Dog Breeders that are Slow Loading
Now, the next thing is websites that are very slow loading. The biggest culprit are those pretty pictures breeders put online to show off their lovely dogs. Those beautiful photos on your website can dramatically slow it down, especially if you don’t have the right add-ons on the admin side to help counteract it.
Slow loading sites are not liked by Google. They don’t give people a good user experience. Google responds to slow sites by giving them low precedence on search engine rankings.
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Dog Breeder Websites that aren’t Secure
Another thing that’s a big no-no but is pretty common with dog breeder websites is that they’re not secure. That means they are not encrypted so any hacker can get in there and steal and information your customers enter e.g. their bank account details, email address etc.
This often happens when breeders think they can build their site on their own. Such breeders think “I’m a bit of a geek. I’ll go and find hosting, and put up my website by myself”. How hard can it be, right?
And if they ever notice their website is not secure, they have no idea what to do about it. It becomes an unsafe site for people to go to. Google won’t dish up unsafe websites and most browsers won’t let people into them even when they do.
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Websites for Breeders that Aren’t Google Optimized
The fifth thing I see are dog breeder websites that are not optimized for Google. There’s lots of moving parts in that. More than I can tell you here.
We teach you how, step by step, in our Elite Breeder Formula program. It’s takes a whole big module to learn how to optimize your site. But you don’t have to be a geek. It’s not something that only geeky people can do. It’s not that difficult to learn how to do this.
And the great thing is that most breeders suck at it! So beating other breeders online is relatively easy [if you know how]. But you don’t know what you don’t know, right?
Having a great website is just part of what it takes to reach your highest success as a breeder. You’ve also got to be an excellent breeder and communicate in a professional manner if you want reach the top of the market.
Want to learn how to do that? Then watch my FREE Online Marketing for Breeders Masterclass. I look forward to seeing some of you there.
Great tips, I have seen my traffic go up and up and up following Dr. Megs’ advice!
That’s fantastic Laura 🙂 If you follow the steps you WILL see great results!
I’m sorry I don’t have a website to put on here that I would love to know how to build one
Hi Meloney.
It is very fast and cheap to have a website built if you know what you are doing. [It can also cost $1000s!!! And still not work…] No matter how it is built, you need to learn how to take control of the content you put on it, and how to make sure it both addresses the most common questions around your breed, AND is set up so Google can see what you are talking about and will therefore put you at the top of the search engines. This is how breeders attract the most highest quality buyers for their puppies, willing to pay the most and willing to wait for the right puppy. This is because such buyers typically “do their research” on the breeds they are considering buying before they approach a breeder. Of course we have to also add lots of value to our puppies so they are worth paying and waiting for, and learn how to communicate their value to prospective clients.
Cheers
Meg