How to Make Your Website Successful

When trying to make it on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can further your bloog´s or website´s success. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites do not automatically become successful, nor do they make sales. There is much more to creating a quality blog or website. To make a blog or website successful, you must create content that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase, or just visiting again.

1. Selecting a Niche

The first step towards making a website successful lies in targeting it for one specific niche. For example, if you are designing a website about cars, everything within your website should relate to cars.

2. Selecting a Keyword Phrase

You must also select the most relevant keyword phrase for each webpage. A keyword phrase consists of two or more words that best describe the specific webpage. For example, if your webpage is about ‘repairing transmissions’, your best keyword phrase would be ‘transmission repair’. You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your webpage (approximately once every 80 – 100 words), as this will enable the search engines to determine what the website is about. This is maybe the most important step on your way to making your blog or website successful.

3. Using HTML Heading Tags

When you begin writing your content, it is very important that you use the HTML H1 heading tag with your main title at the top of your webpage. In addition, use the HTML H2 tags for your sub-titles. This is very important, as some search engines place relevance on the text displayed with heading tags.

As the default text for the H1 heading tag is very large, you may want to use CSS style sheets to display the heading tags in the font style and size you prefer.

4. Using META Tags Within a Webpage

Another step to help make a website successful is to include META tags between the HEAD (<head> and </head> respectively) tags of your webpage. META tags help the search engines to find out what keywords are relevant to the webpage. They are also used to tell the search engines what the webpage is about (description tags). Most search engines will display this description within their search results.

5. Backgrounds and Text

It is always best to display a webpage with a white background and black text, as this will make the text easy to read. Distracting backgrounds will make the text hard to read. A good rule of thumb is to just use common sense and keep your website simple. This alone is a great way to help make a website successful.

6. Animated Graphics

If you are using animated graphics, it is important that you use them sparingly. Graphics that continually flash are VERY annoying and may prevent your visitors from returning to your site in the future.

7. Navigational Links

It is very important to include good navigational links on every page. They should be displayed at the top, bottom, left or right side of your webpage. In addition, your visitors should be able to get to any webpage within your website within four clicks.

8. Webpage Layout

Always be consistent with the design of your website. This is a very important if you want to make your website successful. The layout for each and every page of your website should be the same. If you make it different, your visitors will become confused. In addition, it will make your website appear to be unprofessional. Your website design should include the same layout, logo, and navigation setup on each page.

9. Spelling and Grammar

Always make sure you proof read and spell check your webpages and blog posts for errors before publishing them. It is also very important that your webpage does not have any broken images or links.

10. Important Webpages

When you launch your website, it is very important that you include the following webpages:

About - The ‘About’ page is used to tell your visitors about you and/or your companyand/or the site´s goals.

Privacy - The ‘Privacy’ page is used to let your visitors know what you do with their personal information, such as their email address.

Terms and Conditions - The ‘Terms and Conditions’ page should be displayed on your website for your own protection.

Site Map - A ‘Site Map’ is used to help the search engines index your website more easily as well as more correctly.

You can learn more about all of these pages by doing a little research on the web. They are very important and will help make a website successful.

11. Website Interactivity

Another way to make a website successful is providing interactivity. This can be done by including a targeted forum that complements your website, a form in which your visitors can subscribe to an ezine, a feedback form to enable them to give their opinion, or an informative blog in which visitors can comment.

12. Web Browsers and Screen Resolutions

When you begin designing your webpage, it is HIGHLY recommended that you install the most popular web browsers on your computer. This will enable you to see how your website will display in different browsers. You will find that your website may look great in one browser and horrible in another. It would be wise to design your website to display properly in Internet Explorer, and then it should display properly in Firefox, Opera, etc.

It is also important that you view your website through different screen resolutions. You can either open your webpage in your browser and then change your computer's screen resolution, or there are website's online that you can visit, such as Any Browser, to test your website.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you can make a website successful in no time.

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