The Four Components of a Successful Website

There are, really, lots of things that can make or break a website.  This guru and that sage will talk, talk, talk about their particular angle and their particular strategy and charge you anywhere from $49.99 to $49,999.99 to teach it to you.  Each of these things being taught can be sifted down into four basic components: Content, Optimization, Monetization, and Promotion.

Content

This really is the core.  Everyone may say that “Content is King”, but few understand why, and there are several reasons.  The easiest reason to understand is simple:  That’s what Google looks for. Google values good content, good information, and it’s ranking calculations are set up to reward that.

Another very important reason is that it’s what people are mostly searching for.  Yes, it’s true that people are shopping online, but before they shop, they look for information.

Finally, it’s what gives your website substance. That’s kind of intangible, but it’s what makes people value your site.  It gives you authority. And that helps people when they want to buy.

Additionally, your site’s content has to be focused.  It has to have a good clear topic.  A blog that rants about politics, and then about religion, and reviews movies, and then gripes about the price of groceries might well be a good creative outlet for the author, but it’s not going to build an audience.

Optimization

Of course, if people can’t find your information, it doesn’t much matter, does it?  Your content and your pages have to be set up to contain good keywords, in the proper locations, with the right kind of interlinking.  In other words, even if you have a great hand of cards, you still have to play the game right.  With each of those things in place, your site will be easy to find, and people will come to know it as the place to go for your topic.

Monetization

That’s a newly coined word (pardon the pun) for “how to make this website pay off!”  There has to be some connection to making money, or it’s just a hobby.  There are lots of ways to do this, and they all have advantages and disadvantages.  You can sell products directly from your website, processing credit cards and fulfilling orders.  You can promote the products of other websites through an affiliate program, receiving a percentage of each sale. You can host ads on your site.  A single site can often employ many different streams of income.

Promotion

Finally, the site is ready, so now all it needs is traffic.  Good optimization will be valuable in this process, but there are more ways to make it work, too. Social networking is one way that’s both growing and practical. Paid internet advertising is now more affordable than ever, and it’s the most trackable methods of all. Site owners can be very strategic and get the most impact for their investment.

Over the course of the next few posts, I’ll be covering each of these in more detail. With this overview, however, you can either plan your upcoming website, or you can see which component needs the most work!

Mark is currently employed as an Internet Business Coach.

Mark also has other sites and blogs, including Mark's Black Pot - Dutch Oven Recipes, MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Guest Blogging to Increase Website Traffic

The holy grail of inbound links is an in-content text link where the link text contains one of your strong keywords.  This can be a bit challenging to get set up, because that usually means that someone else has to set it up on their site.  That means that someone else has to like something on your site so much that they take up valuable space on their site or blog talking about you, and linking to you.

This happens, and it’s great when it does.  Really, the only thing you can do to make it happen, however, is by having something really incredible at your website, and then hoping people find it, like it, and link to it.  It’s not practical to say, “Today I’m gonna go get someone to link to me!”

There is, however, a great way to establish these kinds of links and increase website traffic.  To do it, you have to approach other sites, particularly blogs, with the idea that you’re going to give them something they need:  Good content.  You’re going to offer them a “Guest Post.”  In other words, you’ll write a blog post for them to post on their blog.  In the process of doing that, you can establish a link to your website. 

This isn’t anything sneaky.  This is an accepted part of the exchange.  If I’m a blogger, and you provide good content for me, I’m going to allow you to establish a link and increase website traffic to your site as a return of the favor.

Here are some examples of some of my guest posts, designed to promote my Dutch oven cooking blog, marksblackpot.com.  This one, about Dutch oven cooking in the cold, actually contains many internal links.

This one isn’t really about Dutch ovens, but it is about food, so it fit.  I also used it to promote my Utah religious pop culture blog. 

Guesting on Other People’s Blogs

How do you do it?

First of all, read a lot of blogs in your niche.  Find out who are the best, most respected, most trafficed, and most famous bloggers.  Any other relevant blog will do, but the best ones will get you the most traffic. 

As you find these blogs, read a lot of their posts, with the comments, so you get an idea of their point of view and how their audience responds.  Think of a topic that would be good for their blog and good for their audience.  Then, write up a short 3-4 sentence teaser or outline of your topic idea. 

Then you’ll want to contact the blogger and propose your article.  Usually, there will be some kind of email link on the blog, but you might just have to use the comment space of one of their postings.  If you do that, try to pick one that’s about a similar topic.  Tell the hosting blogger that you have an article about such and such a topic, and give them the teaser.  Would they like it as a guest post?  Make sure to leave an email address for them to contact you back, and make sure the comment link (if you’re doing it that way) points back to your blog or site.

Sometimes, the bloggers themselves will put out calls for guest posts.  If you see those, make a note of it, and submit an article or an idea more directly.

If they respond favorably, then write the article, proof it, making sure that it contains good keywords and links.  DO NOT put any affiliate links in the article.  Let the hosting blogger do that if he or she wants to.

Finally, email it to the hosting blogger.  If they like it, they’ll post it, and you’ll both get the benefit.  You’ve helped them with good content, they’ve helped you with a quality link that will be in front of lots of their viewers.

Getting Guests on Your Own Blog

A great way to get started with this of increasing website trafficis to seek out some guest posts for your own blog.  If you’re nervous about contacting established bloggers and feeling like a beggar at their doorstep asking for handouts, then ask them to write a guest post for your blog first.

The contact will still be the same.  The only difference is that you’ll be asking for content instead of pitching it.  If you have an idea for a topic, suggest it, but allow them to come up with their own posts as well.

The Illogical Extreme

As I got to thinking about this, it occurred to me that you could create a blog, write a few posts of pillar content, and then recruit other writers to guest post.  The entire blog could be nothing but guest posts about a relevant topic! 

Interesting...





Mark is currently in the curriculum Department of an internet and SEO training company.

Mark also has other sites and blogs, including Mark's Black Pot - Dutch Oven Recipes, MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Panda Eats Up Lame Content and Spits it Out!

Some more thoughts on the value of valuable content:

For a long time, one of the biggest promotional strategies of the ‘net has been to establish lots of “content-based” links by writing an article and submitting it to hundreds of article directories, each one with a link to your website.

There were several problems with this.  One was that often these “articles” were thinly-veiled sales letters.  For example, if a website was all about baby strollers, the marketer might pick a few featured items, grind out 500 words about the features of those particular strollers, title it something like, “How to shop for a baby stroller”, and off it goes to the directories.  Or, it might have a brief overview of what, in general, makes up a baby stroller, with a few keywords.  

There was little in these, or most other articles that was truly informative or inspiring. If you check the table in my last post about internet content, these articles would go in the “lame” box in the lower right.

These are web pages that end up as what some people call “flotsam and netsam”.  These are pages that are mere clutter that clog up the ‘net and make it that much harder for people to find the real information that they’re wanting.

So, last spring, Google revised their ranking algorithm in an update referred to as “Panda”.  A lot of those marketers that had relied on their copied and spun articles with linkbacks found their rankings plummeting.  Those that relied on automatically generated content pulled with searches of keywords and scraped and copied text found that their sites had disappeared from top slots in Google’s search engine results pages.

Here are just a couple of good, informative updates on the subject:

• How Does the Panda/Farmer Update Impact Affiliates?
• Lessons Learned at SMX West: Google’s Panda Update, White Hat Cloaking & Link Building

What this all boils down to is that Google is, once again, establishing content as king.  Good, useful, informative content, that is.  One by one, the quick, easy ways to magical Internet ranking and wealth are disappearing (if they ever existed in the first place), and steady, real, honest writing is winning the day.

Here are some ways to get good ranking and good traffic:

• Write (or pay good writers to write) good content for your websites.  This is true both of blogs and of ecommerce, products-based websites.
• Write good content for external sites, like reputable articles directories and content sites (ezinearticles.com, squidoo.com, hubpages.com).
• Make good sensible comments on other people’s good content (in blogs or other discussion sites.  Even if the links are no-follow, it will help establish your credibility and attract directly clicking traffic.
• Submit good content to other people’s blogs as guest posts.
• Make a good, useful blog yourself.
• Use social networks like twitter and facebook wisely, to draw viewers and generate real buzz.
• In affiliate marketing, give people more content than ads, rather than the other way around.
• Make all of your writing and content rich in good keywords that are not already flooded in the marketplace.

These are the ways to make your site the most attractive and useful to visitors, and to make it more respected and ranked by the search engines.

Mark is currently in the curriculum Department of an internet and SEO training company.

Mark also has other sites and blogs, including Mark's Black Pot - Dutch Oven Recipes, MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Are You a Good Content Writer?

Are you a web content writer? We all have heard many times that “Content is King”.  The problem with this thought is that many people don’t get it.  These content writers flood the ‘net with garbage articles, blog posts, and comments that amount to just more flotsam and netsam.  The online equivalent of white noise.  They forget that what really reigns is GOOD content.

So, what defines content that’s good?  Is it length?  Is it the use of keywords?  Is it relevance?  All of these are factors, it’s true, but for my money, I think it really comes down to two elements:  Is it enlightening?  Is it practical?

For an article or post to be enlightening, it has to make me think about something in a new way.  It can point out something that I hadn’t considered before, or inform me of some facts or events that I’d been previously unaware.  It has to show me or teach me or inform me.

If it’s practical, then it has given me something that I can apply to my daily life in a very direct way.  It has taught me steps to help me achieve my goals, or it has shown me new tricks to make something easier.

So, I’ve graphed this out in a quadrant scale:  Along one side we can see if an article is enlightening.  Along the bottom, we can see if it’s practical.  Each space helps to score the overall quality of the content.

• Square 1: In the lower left, we have content that is neither enlightening nor practical.  This is 90% of the sludge out there on the internet now.  It’s sales letters, and ad campaigns.  It’s vapid blogging.  It’s everywhere.  And it’s lame.
• Square 2:  This is writing that is enlightening, but not practical.  These are philosophical musings, opinion blogs, well-thought essays.  This can be really well done, and enjoyable to read.
• Square 3:  Here we’ll find content that is practical, but not necessarily inspiring.  How-to articles are frequently here in this section.  This kind of content frequently draws inbound links, because people like content that solves problems.
• Square 4:  Content like this is often difficult to write.  It requires knowing your audience’s needs, and knowing how your information can best help them, both in a personal and a practical way.  It’s powerful stuff, and it draws lots of links and attention. If it’s placed right, it can go viral and draw lots of qualified traffic.  Even though you might not hit this everytime, always strive for this, the best of the best.

Compare what you write to the graph and see what you get.  In time, it'll improve your efforts as a web content writer!








Mark also has other sites and blogs, including Mark's Black Pot - Dutch Oven Recipes, MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.