Web Site Development

So, you've decided to develop a Web site.

Maybe you want to present your ideas to others. Maybe you want to make some money. Maybe you just want to show off your family to distant friends and relatives.

For a personal site, you can do just about anything. Let your family and friends know about your site. Then sit back and read their emails where they tell you how beautiful your children look.

But, if you want to present your ideas to others, or make some money...

...then you need to do some efficient and effective work in Web site development.

If I simply answered, "It's easy!" you would instinctively know that something isn't right.

After all, you probably have a Web site or want to develop one.

If you already have a Web site, you know that getting people to visit it isn't simple. You've got to know the "tricks of the trade."

You've got to have a plan. You know the old saying:

Well, it's true.

You've got to have a plan. And then you have to work.

A Web site with random Web pages is not going to attract an audience that will be receptive to your ideas or products.

A Web site that is too general in nature will not attract the targeted audience that will be seriously interested in your ideas or products. Web site development must have a goal--and every page must advance that goal.

Before most people buy your product (or ideas) they need to read a number of pages. They need to think about the possibilities you are proposing. All your pages must be related to the Web site's purpose.

Web site development requires a plan.

So, here is an example of my plan.

My "Cheap Long Distance" site targets people who want to lower the phone bills.

Along with advice, I provide affiliate links for a number of Cognigen services.

Currently, I am developing additional pages that will enhance my position in the Google search engine (as well as other search engines). These pages should provide a benefit to people and increase interest in the site.

As of this writing, this site is number 5 at Google (and number 1 at AltaVista) after the paid listings for the competitive phrase "cheap long distance". I'm getting one or two new customer per day. Increasing the total number of customers I help in this way adds to my monthly commissions by about $50 per month.

But, you'll need to spend your time wisely developing the right pages. Random pages will not work to draw traffic.

But, just how can you go about efficiently developing pages that will be popular? Is it just hit and miss? Or is there a trick to developing just the right pages?

The first Web site development task involves determining what "keyword phrases" are important. These keyword phrases will be used in your Web pages' META tags as well as the body of the pages.

Before you read the rest of this page, I recommend you read the following pages:

My first task in deciding on new pages for my site was to use "Good Keywords" from Softnik Technologies. Using search terms popular at Overture, I get a sense of what terms are important.

I copied these keyword phrases from the Good Keywords tool directly into a spreadsheet. Then, I sorted the phrases by the number of hits.

You can download my "credit keywords" spreadsheet here. You can use this spreadsheet to copy your keyword phrases to help accelerate your progress.

Notice that some of the phrases are repeated. For example, the phrase home equity loan is duplicated; it is obtained from key words equity and loan. The spreadsheet consists of the following columns:

OK. That was the easy part. Now you need to determine what phases pertain to your site.

Obviously, the phrases with high hit counts will be valuable. But, they'll also be popular. Here is where you may want to use WordTracker, a unique service that provides information about both the popularity of keywords and the competition you'll face.

This can help in selecting the keywords you want to concentrate on first.

Notice that I found 185 unique keyword phrases (out of 592) that pertain to my site.

WOW! That's a huge number of phrases.

I'll need to develop a page that targets each keyword phrase. Occasionally, a single page can target more than one phrase. For example, one page could be used for "online credit card" and "online credit card application".

Good Web site development looks like a lot of work.

Well, yes. There are a lot of pages that need to be developed. Remember, you do want to attract targeted traffic, don't you? And here is where the Web site development work begins.

So here is where we begin the...

Yes! Here is where the grunt work of web site development begins. Now we need to develop our pages.

You'll find that the there are a lot of keyword phrases that are related to the topic of your site. You should be able to write several hundred words about each keyword phrase. Be sure to make your paragraphs short--two or three sentences at most. Nothing makes a person hit the "Back" button faster than a page of solid text.

You can add some images or drawings to illustrate your points. This make the pages more friendly and makes easier reading on the Web.

As I develop each additional page I evaluate how attractive the pages are to search engines. Not only must the page be attractive to people, they must be "attractive" to search engines.

By attractive to search engines, I mean that search engines must think that the pages are important and are relevant to a certain keyword phrase.

I use Web Position Gold to determine how attractive my pages are to search engines. You can download a free trial copy of Web Position Gold here.

Second, your affiliate program may have some Web page templates you can use.

My site http://www.clean-credit.us uses a template provided by the vendor. I modified it to target the keywords "clean up my credit report".

After you have your site pretty well developed, you need to get others to link to your site.

External sites that link to you are particularly important for Google.

My reciprocal links script can help you exchange links with with Web sites. You should try to exchange links with sites somewhat related to your site.

Once you've developed your pages...

...and looked the over a few times for errors...

...you're ready to tell the world.

You only need to submit your site to the search engines once. Periodically each engine will examine all your pages (spider you site). This will catch all new or updated pages.

Yes, updating can take a month or more. Each search engine takes anywhere from two to eight (or more) weeks to index a page. So, sit back and have faith that the hits will come.

And, once you see where your pages are placed in the search results, you can tune each page to get it ranked higher. Again, Web Position Gold is a great tool for finding out how to get that higher ranking.

The free Webmaster Toolkit is also a great tool to use to tune your pages. Read about it here.

How do you eat an elephant?

The same way you develop a Web site.

Web site development creates pages one character at a time. Or in computer talk, one "byte" at a time.

Yes, Web site development takes some time. But, you didn't think you could replace the income from your day job in a day, did you?

Happy "Web site development" trails,
Bob Sherman

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