Making a Site People Want
Domain names live in a state of optional value. They depend on the current state of a website pertaining to that url or a future site built by the domain owner, a webmaster, a site editor, or some programming guru. Domainers have learned by now to skip all the shortcuts, tricks and ladders to get visitor traffic and develop any domain name to its fullest content driven potential.
The best type of website to make right now is one that provides content, resources or ideas that other sites can use. Many webmasters put up sites without access to the content making talent or blog writing skills such sites require. Producing content today for online publication is the equivalent of encyclopedia publishing sixty years ago. But the turnover in its being refreshed is measured in milliseconds.
The gimmick of online site architecture is to give the people what they want. Making a web site people want would seem obvious. Make a portal or destination online that provides a fact sheet, source, how-to crib, problem solution or unique resource, and let people know how they can find it. Articles with a fresh perspective, satiric slant, sarcastic wit or in-depth analysis “sell” online.
RSS feeds prowl for distinctly sticky content with eyeball traction. Yet all too often webmasters and domainers with a new domain name acquisition come running, clutching plans for a wannabe site nobody needs. They stuff the landing page with ads, tapping their fingers until the Google and affiliate wealth rolls in. They blister the blogs with irrelevant and nonsensical comments destined to be dumped as spam. They expect something from nothing.
Some site editors use site plan models of sites that don’t apply to their content or subject . Some project managers for the website use a software that doesn’t suit the data type or discoverability of that content type. Some webmasters make outsize graphics and logos that dominate a site’s front page and bury the lead content under a scrolldown that will never happen.
Why work to make new sites with no original content at all? The energy coming from the Internet is that subject matter of all types in accessible language is available to anyone. Worried about medical symptoms and think it might be mesothelioma? Look it up. Trying to install that wall corner bracket mount of HDTV? Look up the YouTube before you screw it up. Thinking about what kind of prom dress is in this year? Search online to get the last word.
People are now accustomed to using the Internet for information, advice, counseling, social contact, communication, and instruction. That is a lot of authority to hand to a second generation website architecture and cram it with ads and expect people to drop by and pay attention. But some of the most avidly visited sites provide help and shortcuts people want.
The websites for gaming cheats and keystroke cribs and video game information and “quest” data are a terrific example. The information, like in a computer manual, television circuit diagram, warranty brochure, or “Dummies” book, is supplied in shorthand for brief reference. The main information, for example, is at the game site. But all the users (game players) want to plow through the gobbledygook and get to the action.
Online site browsers are such “game players”. They want to visit the quickest site for their chosen item and close the circle of question and answer the fastest. But even a quick Google search can yield thousands of search results that puzzle them. Why do so many sites get reported as results that have nothing to do with what they typed in? This is the SEO wrangle webmasters must conquer through critical application of content, keyword, tags, and search terms.
Writing for other website publications, broadly keyword tagged with subject and categorical application, can make thousands of webmasters a day flock to your site. RSS feeds and visiting browsers can make or break a site by their absence or presence. Participation and promotion of a site’s main message seeds from there. But the stamp of originality and competent authorship must be present.
The marketing needed to launch a website can take several traditional avenues that have been imitated online. Viral “friends and family” promotion of a website taps one network. Social network sites’ promotion of a site and its purpose taps another network. Providing content for RSS feeds for other webmasters infuses another network of potential site visitors. Professional site listings and links also contribute to exploratory traffic.
One javelin into this new user base is the involvement of site content with promotion via social network sites. These sites, like Twitter, Google, MySpace, Facebook, and others derive from assembled pieces of other sites published daily. When the content material is tagged by category and subject, new readers can investigate easily. Such sites demand fresh content all the time.
Webmasters building websites from a pure profit perspective need to evaluate their raison d’etre and provide more than just one more streaming Google ad-based url. They need to research the competition, provide a unique assembly of information or solution data, compose it attractively and program it to work easily and visually for effective visitation online. Then link it up.
