You, knowing that he hasn’t given you everything you need to work with, agree to begin building his website.

Your customer/friend understands that he didn’t convey to you what he wanted the business or hobby website to look like because he couldn’t remember the original vision he had.

He understands that what he has provided you with isn’t all that he would have liked to have supplied or enough for you to know exactly how to finish the website.

However, he has confidence in your abilities and entrusts you with the task of building his website.

You begin the project and even though it seems challenging, without all of the materials, you work things out to look really good. But, there are still a few things that you need his input on.

You call him and speak to him directly. You explain that things are going better than you had originally thought and you are making great progress. In fact, you are really feeling good about what you have done so far.

But, you tell him that you need for him to tell you what he wants you to do with the arrangement of a few things. You get off the phone thinking he will get back with you.

In the meantime, you continue to work on what you can to make things look nice. A few days go by and he hasn’t contacted you.

So, you call him and leave another message and days go by again and he doesn’t return your call. Out of your commitment to complete the job, you continue to work on the things you can. You sharpen a few images over here and realign a few blocks of text over there.

Then, you call him a second time and leave another message and still there is no return call.

You are still committed the cause of completing the task and keep working on the minor details to make your work flawless and pleasant to look at.

The truth of the matter is that you are somewhat proud of your accomplishments and have really enjoyed working on creating something from the little he gave you to work with.

Finally, you arrange a meeting with your friend and show him how far you have come.

He takes time to look at things with you and then says: “that’s not what I originally envisioned. I know when we first met, I couldn’t explain to you what my original vision was or exactly how I wanted things to be. And to be honest with you, I still can’t see what it is supposed to look like in order to be able to tell you. I think we shouldn’t leave the website looking like this, it’s not what I wanted.”

You smile and say: “OK!”

How could this have been handled differently and what would you have said to this friend after you had invested a considerable amount of time into the website building project?

Taking advantage of the Google Webmaster Tools can improve your site’s user- friendliness on the Internet. Create an account with Google and then learn how to add an Intuit/Homestead website-connection so that you can see how they view your web pages.

Don’t use the HTML authentication method described in the video.
Follow the steps in the video below to incorporate your site into your account. Don’t use the HTML method of authentication as described in the video.

Verify your site with the meta tag method.
Use the “meta tag” method. I have included an image from inside the Sitebuilder Program describing where you should add the “Meta Tag” when verifying and authenticating your Homestead website as being yours.

How to use Google Webmaster Tools to your Advantage

Using the webmaster tools to monitor how Google is seeing our websites is a wise thing to do. Taking advantage of this free program can greatly help us achieve higher placements within the search engines. Inside the program you will find useful information as to how they see your Intuit/Homestead website.

Here are a few things I pay close attention to:

Links
There is a listing inside of your account that will show the internal and external links related to your website.

Crawl Errors
This statistic should be taken with a grain of salt at times because it is not accurate. On one occasion the Google Bot reported that it could not find my index page and therefore stated that there were a hundred pages that they could not crawl. This was not the case. When the site was crawled soon afterward, all of the website’s pages were found by the Google crawler.

Where Pages are Ranked in the Index
Google names this report “Top Search Queries”. This is valuable information that you can use to see which of your URLs are getting the highest placements and the most click-through activity. By monitoring this vitally important report, you can target specific pages of your Intuit site for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes.

Keywords
Pay close attention to the keywords that Google references your website’s content by. When writing your content, notice if any of the keywords tend to fit in with the subject matter of your article and if so, then incorporate them into and throughout your text. This is one of the many factors that can improve the number of pages which make it into the top search engine results.

Making a Homestead Website Connection with Google

It is in the Webmaster Tools area where you make the connection between the sitemap on your Intuit site and Google. This is something that is manually done by you. Click the link to get a tutorial on how to add a sitemap to an Intuit website. This is not automatically updated. You will periodically need to update it as you add more pages to your site.

If you are serious about increasing the exposure of your Intuit website, then you are going to need to use all possible avenues that are available to you. Since Google is the largest supplier of search engine traffic on the Internet, it’s wise to use the free Web-Master Tools available as leverage. I am convinced that the information provided through their free services has been beneficial in the development process of my Intuit websites. In fact when I first made a successful Homestead website connection, within two months I was able to push three of my SiteBuilder pages higher in the search engine results pages.

Google is still looking at your pages and internal linking structure very much the same.

If you have purchased the SEO lessons for Intuit/Homestead website users you have all of the tools that you need to set your internal search engine optimization up correctly. The results in this video showing many of my  top rankings with a Homestead website speak for them selves.

Many SEO professionals have reassured me that our search engine optimization video instructionals are in line with current techniques.

I would like to call your attention to something that is changing in the search engine results pages that we need to be aware of though.

Local Search Results With Google Maps Pushing Down Organic Listings
In case you haven’t noticed, Google is serving up a large block, sometimes ten listings, of local search results at the top of the first page. I discovered this while watching a video on the Web Pro News site. This is causing the organic listings to be pushed lower on the page. Here’s my suggestion, if you have a business, make sure that it is listed with Google maps. Follow the instructions below to get registered for this free service.

1) Create a Google account
2) Follow this link: Google Local Business Center
3) Enter your business information
4) Claim your business

To optimize for Google map results,  make sure your local business name, address and phone number are on your “Home” page and on your “contact page.” This will help in notifying the search engine spiders that your website is related to a local business in your community.

All of the information that we provide in the SEO Extreme Video Series is  in line with top SEO professional’s opinions as to what Google is looking for when they spider your Site Builder web pages. For the minimal amount of money the course costs, the results will be worth the investment.

There are a few places online for finding solutions for your Intuit/Homestead website technical problems. Altogether the hosting service and software work effortlessly well and both are very user friendly. Any time that I am experiencing difficulties with using the sitebuilder program, I contact tech support.

Using the Homestead website technical support team is always my first choice for solving any type of issue I may be having at the moment. This is by far the best place to get the technical things ironed out.

On the other hand, there are many subjects that the support team will not be able to help you with. One of the biggest blockades we all face online is getting website traffic. Just because you built a website does not mean that you will be getting loads of visitors coming to your pages.

Having been a user of this software program for several years now, I’ve been able to master getting traffic and top rankings with search engines. Because of my accomplishments, I now offer several products that provide help for Homestead users.

Once you have launched your site, the biggest challenge you will face is getting targeted traffic coming into your site.

Three things that will help solve your Homestead website traffic problems

1) Watch the Homestead Website Expert channel on Youtube
2) Learn Homestead website SEO
3) Download this free Homestead Website Traffic eBook

In the past, there have been no problems that have ever hindered my Intuit Homestead website from operating properly. Every technical issue that I have ever had was solved quickly and accurately by the tech support team at Homestead. As I mentioned the most frustrating part of any website is getting targeted traffic to the pages. You can over come many of the problems associated with this issue by gaining access to many of my tutorials (listed above) designed to help Intuit website users.

There was a time when I had to wrestle with the Homestead Storefront program. I surely learned a huge lesson then about trying to learn a new website building program. Afterward, I made a decision to avoid building storefronts because there was too much HTML coding involved. The difficulty came when the tech support engineers at Homestead told me that many of the problems I was experiencing were due to the HTML code being messed up. The Homestead tech support employees are not allowed to alter or offer advice about altering the HTML code. Storefront is far from being anything like the Site Builder program. There are very few things inside that are point, click, drag and drop in the web page building program. The new learning curve was huge. The best thing to do is just go with the basics in the program and not try to customize anything.  In any event, I eventually finished the customer’s online clothing store with the help of the Intuit/Homestead tech support team. I could not have accomplished the task without their help.

In the past few years they have helped me learn how the Hmail email system works. On another occasion they explained all of the features in the Real Tracker statistics program. When I transferred several domain names over to Godaddy, the tech support person helped walk me through the entire process.

On several occasions I have purchased domain names with Godaddy, but built the websites with the Homestead SiteBuilder system. The tech agent from Homestead and also with Godaddy both assisted me in getting the website and domain name set up correctly. The process involved changing DNS numbers and servers which at the time was just a little bit over my head.

Never hesitate to contact the Intuit Company with your web design questions, billing issues, email problems or domain pointing issues. It has been my experience that if the person you are working with on the phone cannot answer your question; they will get someone who can.

I wrote a Homestead website builder review that gave the tech support team five stars. In the years of working with this excellent hosting company, I have had nothing to really complain about other than my own stupidity with not understanding HTML code when I was working with the storefront program. Although it was disappointing at the time because the tech support personnel are instructed to not work with the HTML code, a couple of them did anyway to fix my mess-ups. For their help, I am extremely grateful.

A big THANKS!  to all of the Intuit Homestead SiteBuilder tech support team for the help that you provide for all of us. You truly are greatly appreciated.

When an Intuit website owner finally gets a good handle on site design and basic SEO, it’s time to start pushing the pages up in the search engine results pages. How do you accomplish this task? This is done by developing inbound links pointing to the new sites pages. In the Internet world these are called back-links. The higher the quality and the more relevant the backlink is, the higher the website’s page may go in the search engines results pages.

This may sound a bit confusing if you are new to the Internet world. There is an easy way to get professional answers to your link building questions about Homestead websites.

Jordy Christo has designed another powerful course to help Homestead website owners learn how to generate quality votes for their web sites. The new product is called Backlink Liftoff and will be launched on Friday, December eleventh 2009.

When webmasters study the weekly advanced link building lesson plans and accomplish all of the assignments, Jordy guarantees that their traffic will increase. As the sixteen week course  moves forward a community begins to form surrounding the Intuit website that all of the links are pointing to. The niche community and original Intuit website work hand in hand to bring many visitors to the Homestead web pages.

These tutorials are designed to assist the beginner and intermediate Intuit website enthusiast achieve great levels of success with their Homestead website. This is not a fast process though. Just like any business a website has to grow slowly over time. Link building is a huge part of the growing process.

When backlinks are steadily built over time, the reputation and foundation of the site becomes strong in the search engine’s eyes. Getting to the top of the results pages and staying there takes time and continual effort. Jordy Christo always says that achieving success online takes persistence and patience.

The new course is designed to email the purchaser one lesson every week for sixteen weeks. Each of the lessons, designed for helping with Homestead website link building, h has a twenty minute long video and a text guide.

The additional text lesson is provided with the video to assist the student in building fast quality links. It is provided as a quick reference that lists website URLs and makes anchor text link codes easy to copy and paste in the designated locations.

All of these strategies are used by professional Internet marketers to achieve top listings with Google, Yahoo and Bing. Building inbound links for an Intuit website is one of the most important things a business or hobby web developer can do.

The Backlink Liftoff course has all flash videos so there will be no downloading necessary. The video tutorials for building links will be easy to view by just clicking on the start tab.

Included in the courses curriculum are very useful website links to  software that will help Homestead users post multiple backlinks at one time. In the lessons it is advised that these tools should be used sparingly as to not draw attention to your website for building links too quickly.

The tips, tricks and techniques that are included in the advanced link building course are all consider being white hat SEO.

Jordy Christo has achieved great success with his Intuit/Homestead website link building techniques. Many of the videos he has published on the Internet demonstrate his ability to consistently get top rankings with Google, Yahoo and Bing. All of the techniques taught in the Backlink Liftoff link building course are designed to bring free search engine traffic to your Homestead website’s pages.

Before you start deleting anything, please DO NOT remove any sub domain website that you originally built which are now associated with your main .com, .org. or .net published designs. Keep the original http://www.originalwebsite.homestead.com domain in your list.

How to remove an unwanted website from your account list:

1) Log into your main Intuit/Homestead account, not Site Builder. Inside the main account is where you check your statistics, billing information, set up newsletters and study tutorials about using the SiteBuilder.

2) Select the domain name that you want to delete from the drop-down menu.

3) In the left side bar there is a clickable link titled “Advanced,” click on that link.

4) Now, on the right side of the next page you will see several options, select “delete website.”

5) Your next web page will give you a warning about removing this website. It’s there to protect you from deleting a Homestead website from your account file. DO NOT be in a HURRY to click on the final button until you pause and look closely at the site design that you will be removing from your Intuit website account.

Once you make your final click, the process of deleting your unwanted website will be finished. You will not be able to restore what you have deleted. Getting rid your site  will be irreversible.

In case you missed it, deleting a main website that is a .com from your website file list can only be done by the tech support team. You will be required to submit a formal request through using the “submit a help” ticket link in your account.

Hope this helps you with cleaning out unwanted websites from your Intuit account.

1) Well obviously you’re going to need a website. There are many different builders on the market, but I must say that the Intuit/ Homestead website builder is a really good choice. If you are just starting out, then you’re going to love the Site Builder program from Intuit.

There are some other platforms that are free, but if your goal is to make money, you will have to have your own site at some point in time. If you just want to get information out on the Internet, then programs like WordPress, Squidoo, and Zimbio are totally free for publishing content onto the Internet. Create an account with any one or all of them and start building right away.

2) Write generous amounts of content. The king of the Internet world is information presented through writing content. Although video and audios are great vehicles for getting the message out to people in the Internet world, it is the content on the pages that acts as the foundational anchor.

Publish articles on a daily basis. Notice that I said; “publish articles daily.” An occasional article or two will not bring the results that you need. You’re going to have to get passionate about your niche topic and what you are presenting on the Internet. If you are going to succeed, the second of the three tips must be implemented in an extremely strong manner.

The foundation of everything online is dependant on content. If the information is not on your page, how do you expect to be found? You can pay for advertising, but that’s going to get really expensive fast.

3) Creating links is the third most important aspect of these three tips for online success with your Intuit website hosted with the Homestead Site Builder company. For years it has been suggested that people get back-links from directories and exchanging with other niche sites that share common interests with the content that you have published on your pages. This is not the popular suggestion during the year 2009.

In the time period that we are living in now, it is suggested that we as webmasters get quality inbound links from websites that share the same interest that we are publicizing on the Internet.

You can build these all important links by creating accounts with blogs, or commenting on blogs, participating in forums that allow signature links and through using places like Digg and Hub Pages. These must be clickable anchor links that point to your website pages.

If you use these three tips consistently, I guarantee that you will achieve some success on the Internet. It’s actually pretty simple, but does require work. So, in review, the three tips for achieving Internet success are learning website development, using the Intuit/Homestead website builder, generating loads of content and building links. So, web pages, content and links are the best combination for achieving success online.

One last thing, mix in a lot of patients in the process too!

You will have three options in this particular situation that will cause the SiteBuilder to open when you choose one of them.

It’s important to choose wisely!

1) Download Published Copy
2) Keep Local
3) Click on the X to close the window

First we must understand that when we download the Site Builder program it gets stored on our personal computer. Every time we are working on website pages, they are being remembered on our personal computer.

When we publish our Intuit website pages they then are stored at the Homestead Hosting server. While we continue working on a page making changes after we publish it, if we only save the page, Homestead may not have synchronized the record of the changes. The reason for this is because the changes were saved in the SiteBuilder program on your computer, but not at Homestead.

Selecting the Correct Option

Download the Published Copy
If you decide to download the published copy it will change what is inside the memory of your personal computers memory. So, if you were working on a page that you wanted to continue working on and you clicked on “Download Published Page,” the Site Builder memory is going to change to the published copy. This means that the changes you made to your page prior to trying to login will be lost and the old published version will be remembered inside your computer in the SiteBuilder program.

Keep Local Copy
Now you should be able to understand what this means by reviewing the previous paragraph. If you select this option by clicking on the icon, you will be using everything in the SiteBuilder that is stored on your computer.

Click on the X
If you click on the X you will be using what was stored on your personal computer in Intuit’s SiteBuilder.

Why is this a valuable feature in the Intuit website program? Here’s why I think it is a great asset to have. Let’s suppose that we are at home working on our permanent/ stationary computer and we save our files in the SiteBuilder. Then, we decide to take our laptop to Starbucks and work on the website using SiteBuilder. Now we decide to publish all of the pages while we are at Starbucks. They get stored in the Homestead hosting center. The following day you decide to get on the different computer that you used to make edits within the SiteBuilder on your Homestead website before you went to Starbucks, changed and published your pages. Well, this computer at home has the old information stored on it in the SIteBuilder.

Here’s what happens you try to login and SiteBuilder tries to connect with Homestead’s server. It makes the connection, but notices that the published files and the saved files in SiteBuilder are completely different.

You had better select to download the published copy to the SiteBuilder on your home PC. If you do not you will be working with the old edits that you were making before you went to Starbucks and the look of your pages will be totally different from what you want.

If you get this message, “View Published Copy” and you will also have the option to “View Local Copy” choose wisely before just clicking on anything. The results of your choices could change your website completely. Make sure you understand how all of this affects your website.

1) Writing the Contract-Always assemble a written agreement and have it signed by both parties. This must be a very detailed agreement; don’t skip this part. It should include specifics as to how many pages are included in the price, how many photos the package includes and who will be responsible to design the logo. What will the limitations be for video and audio requests? How many special forms will be built, such as contact information submission forms?  Write out what specifically is not included and all the details of what is included. The customer is going to have to supply you with many things such as photos, content, page names and sub headings. The contract should spell out exactly what the customer is responsible to provide to your Intuit/Homestead website development company. Trust me this will safeguard you against losing money in the long run.

2) Build Nothing Until-Never start developing the website until your customer has provided all of the materials that you have requested. This is one guideline that you must stick to. This will help you build your Intuit SiteBuilder pages quicker. It will eliminate the possibility of unnecessary work when linking all of the pages together. You will be able to assemble your main template page with the header, footer, side bar, page links and categories one time. This will allow you to effortlessly duplicate the template for all of the SiteBuilder pages that will be required for the customers’ website.

3) Provide an SEO Guide-Intuit websites need to be built in a special way in order for the pages to be appealing to Google, Yahoo and Bing.

I’m guessing that you know about how to optimize an Intuit website. If not you can start by studying our free SEO Intuit website eBook.

If you have been hired as a web development business, people are going to expect to have traffic coming to their Intuit site. It’s your job to give them professional ideas for how they should assemble the items you need so you can deliver professional results in this arena.

By providing a content writing guide for your customers to follow, you can educate them as to how the content should be written in order for you to be able to build their website so that they have a chance of getting found by the major search engines.

4) Always Collect a Deposit-It’s just good business practice to collect money in advance for your services. By the time you get to the point of signing a contract, the customer should have trust in you because of the ideas and insight that you have provided in advance. In other words, they should feel as though you have given them a lot of professional guidance for free and have great confidence in your Intuit website development abilities.

In all of my web business contracts I require a fifty (50%) deposit at the time the contract is signed. You can collect the remainder when you are finished or split the payments into thirds, 30% upfront and two more payments as you build the Intuit site for them.

Building a Homestead/Intuit website for yourself is very time-consuming. It is going to be much more demanding when you start a web development business. When you are designing your own site, when you are assembling the materials it is very easy to keep them organized. When your customers are providing all of the content, images, videos and audios,  things can get a bit unorganized, especially when you are trying to sort through fifty emails that they have sent to you.

There are many other ideas that I will be revealing in future blog posts that will help you make money with your Intuit website building abilities. Web development is big business and with the Internet growing at such a fast pace, there will be many opportunities for you to make money with your Homestead website.