How does one go about building a successful website? Practically speaking, the actual building of the website shouldn’t be particularly strenuous, especially if you employ powerful online blogging software like WordPress. Even a rank amateur could have himself quite an impressive piece of online real estate after only a few hours work. Then the question becomes how to create that all important search engine love, the “glicken” that attracts traffic like a top-of-the-line Hoover.
1. Great Content: More research comes out almost daily now that informs us Internet marketers of a fact we already knew. A great website requires great content, not keyword-stuffed headlines and articles written for the sake of the search engine rather than for the information seeker. Before you even buy a domain name or choose a hosting package, sit down and start brainstorming ideas for content – REAL content – not “about” or “FAQ” pages or collections of links. Shoot for 100 pages of good, make that great, content. You don’t have to finish it all at once but keep a notebook to jot down content ideas as they come to you.
2. Domain: It used to be taken for granted that a keyword stuffed domain was preferable to a search engine than one that actually made sense to a human brain. Thankfully, the bad old days of obnoxious domains seem to be behind us now and branding is the Big Idea for marketers now. This makes perfect sense to us. Large (and small) successful businesses did not get that way by lounging behind such a creative stroke of domain genius as www.buy-a-boring-widget.com. Ask Google, Walmart, or Taco Bell. Keyword based domain names, especially those with hyphens in between the words, always seemed faintly sleazy and desperate. Don’t waste your time with that approach any more. Think of something that sticks in the consumer’s head and go with it.
3. Site Design: Let it not be said that no one ever told you to get rid of the complex scripts, ostentatious graphics, and complex navigating hierarchy. Simple is good if you want to attract people and make sales. Clean and fast-loading is synonymous with professional. Unless your goal is to appear as something other than professional, we suggest that text content far outweigh HTML content. Dump the fancy gizmos, gadgets, and widgets. We may be going out on a limb here but the percentage of traffic that comes to your website just to see a cool widget is remarkably low.
These three steps certainly aren’t the final word on creating a successful website, but they are a good start. Stay tuned. There’s a good chance we’ll re-visit and expand upon this topic in the near future.
The Creating Wealth Team
Flickr / tonylanciabeta
