You have products or services you want to sell? You want to
use the internet as your main publicity vehicle? So you want
a website? You want to sit atop the rankings for the search
engines? You want loads of visitors to your site? You want
a high conversion rate from visitors to paying customers? We
are all in that situation and it is possible to achieve all
of these wants by following a few simple rules.
1. Web Site Design.
Keep it simple with no flashy opening graphics. People searching
for products or services do not want to wait while these
graphics load and play through. They will probably have gone
elsewhere before they get to the ‘nitty gritty’ of
your site. Text based sites load faster, are more search
engine friendly and are more likely to contain information
the visitor is searching for. Base your site on plenty of
good text and keep the graphics to the absolute minimum required
to do the job.
2. Web Site Structure.
Produce as many pages as you can. The bigger the better..
Search Engines give a preference to sites with large numbers
of pages. Plan a straightforward navigation path through
these pages. Make it simple for people to find what they
are looking for on your site and easy to click through onto
different pages.
3. Web Site Content
Good quality content is a necessity if your site is to perform
well. So what makes good quality content? Firstly it has
to be well written from the point of view of grammar and
punctuation. Secondly it must contain information into which
your keywords can be embedded. Telling people how marvellous
your products or services are is not good quality. Telling
them what the likely benefits are to them is good quality
and a better sales pitch into the bargain. Put yourself in
the position of a visitor. Does your site tell them how to
solve their problem? Is it informative and easy to read?
It should be.
4. Search Engine Positions
Submit to as many free directories as you can find. Look
at your competitors backlinks and find sites that you can
also submit to. Develop some reciprocal links with related
sites. What constitutes a related site is quite flexible
so think carefully about these before committing to a link.
Link with a wide range of sites with differing page rank
values do not only choose those with high page ranks. The
bulk of the links should be page rank 3 or 4. Develop a weblog
attached to your site and keep this updated, at least once
per week. This will attract the search engines to spider
your site and will also attract in more links. Write and
publish articles which will bring in large numbers of inbound
links and by putting them onto your site will update and
increase your content.
Four basic rules have been outlined above which if carried
through should eventually see your ‘wants’ gratified.
However I have only skimmed the surface as each of these
topics are several articles in themselves, but you should
be able to easily find information about each of them. Take
on board the advice and your site will be one of the successful
ones.
David Andrew Smith is the owner of
http://www.wesparkle.co.uk a
cleaning services company and he has developed his own website
