Take a good, hard look at your Web site. Does it accurately define your online business?

Does the language, design, graphics, contents, and flavor match your products and services?

Let me give you an example.

Look at this blog. It’s extremely colorful. I use pictures with every single post. There’s a cartoon graphic of me at the top of the page, and I put on hats (Designed by Hilary of Weekend Gardener!) for every season.

This blog is different from most blogs, and it’s meant to be. 

I’m trying to teach SEOs and readers of this blog how to think with the right side of their brains (the creative, free thinking side) to unleash their creativity in order to show them how truly powerful it can be.

When Martin (who works with me on this blog) first created the blog, he designed the blog to look like the rest of the site, which is where our Workshop Resource Center resides. That’s the way it’s normally done when you create a blog that resides on the same domain as a Web site.

But when I saw the blog in that template, I immediately knew it was all wrong. I couldn’t create in that environment. It had no color, no fun, no creativity to it. It was too . . . SEO.

So Martin gave me some parameters and sent me looking for blog templates. I found this one. It was perfect.

Then, we had a caricature done, and I decided to use the one of me on the blog. I thought it would be fun to put a different hat on me for different holidays.

This whole blog is meant to instill creativity, idea generation, and forward thinking. Creativity should be part of the SEO process, but the blog couldn’t be placed in an SEO-looking site.

Let’s take another example. If you have a corporate Web site, you’d want the corporate image throughout the Web site. The language you use, the graphics, color scheme, design, etc., should all scream “corporate.”

By the same token, if you have a hobby store, you’d better build a fun Web site that sets my creativity loose and makes me want to buy. A dull and boring online hobby shop would never work.

Remember who your audience is. If you have a hunting and fishing store, your audience is varied: sportsmen, hunters, fishermen and women, youth considering the sport, gift buyers, collectors, etc. Write in a language that appeals to your main audience. Speak their language. Design the site around their likes and dislikes.

You wouldn’t want to use an unsmiling person on a vacation site. You also wouldn’t want to use a picture of a lady looking away from the camera on a cosmetic site. Did the cosmetics ruin her complexion? We want to see her beautiful smile on a cosmetic site!

On a site with a older audience, don’t use a black background with a white font. It’s very difficult to read, and the white font sparkles. Instead, use a larger font size with a white background and black font. Make it easy on your customers.

Think about your target audience and make sure your Web site accurately defines your business. Your Web site needs to make sense on more levels than one.

Good luck!

Robin