Website Optimization 101

As a new webmaster (or webmistress), it can be hard to discern exactly where to start promoting your site. You know you want to create a site that is popular, easily found, useful, and ultimately, profitable. However, achieving online success with your website requires you to make careful decisions from the very start.

Choosing a Domain

Even selecting your domain name can be a key to your site’s positive development. From a basic marketing perspective, a simple, easy-to-remember URL is important. When you tell people in “real life” about your website, you want the name to be planted like a seed in their minds so that they can visit it themselves the next time they sit down at the computer. The domain name you select is also important for search engine optimization. During the selection process, think of words or phrases people might be using when searching for a site like yours. Incorporate the most popular one into the URL of your choice.

Building the Site

The most important thing to remember when building your site is that content is critical. Flash and other animation-heavy sites have a much harder time achieving placement in organic search results on Google, Yahoo, and MSN because the text content is lacking. Search engines need to crawl text in order to find and place your site, so plan for each page to include a minimum of 500 words in articles, blurbs, and captions.

Just as considering possible search terms was an important factor in selecting your domain name, these terms come into play once again when drafting site content. While you absolutely want the content on your site to include many of your keywords, you also need to be cautious. Overdoing it can cause search engines to negatively rank your site as being spam-like or unnatural.

Concentrating on writing quality articles that contain real, useful information and are sprinkled lightly with key words and phrases is the single most important thing you can do for your web venture.

Getting Noticed

Building a fantastic site with a simple, memorable URL is most definitely the beginning, but search engine marketing does not end there. Unless other sites link to yours, no one will find it, let alone appreciate your hard work!

There are several ways to obtain a quantity of links to your site. One way links can be purchased by directly contacting webmasters who operate related sites. Links can also be bought through services that match up would-be advertisers like yourself with website ads that are willing to place banners and text links for a fee. However, the most common way to link is to trade with related websites. In trading, you place a fellow webmaster’s link on your site in exchange for a link on his or her pages.

When linking, it is important to find related sites. Links from related sites are given more weight than links from unrelated sites., so it is better to have fewer, quality links than a mass quantity of links that appear random or nonsensical.

You should also look for linking opportunities in your online personal life. Perhaps you participate on message boards; if the boards allow it, you can add your link to your signature. If you blog, make sure to link to your site from your blog, and ask your friends to do the same.

Once you start generating back links to your site, you should begin seeing more traffic, increased page rank, and better placement in organic search engine results. But don’t get lazy! Remember that because other webmasters are continually working on their sites, obtaining more and more links, and revising and improving their content, you must do the same. It can take a long time to make it to page one, but it also takes hard work to stay there!