How to write a successful website

      




Today I want to talk about how to write a successful website. As a full-time webmaster, I am happy to say that today I have two very successful travel websites, AsiaExplorers and Penang Travel Tips. Both of them generate thousands of hits every day. However, I have also created some crappy websites that failed miserably, and they are lessons that I have to learn the hard way. If you have always wanted to own a successful website, perhaps what I am about to share, based on my own experience, will be of help to you.

Before we proceed, let's definite what I mean as "successful". By that word, I mean a website that generates a lot of traffic. That may translate into earning you a lot of money - but I would cover money making separately.

Now, how would you know that your website is generating a lot of traffic? The first thing you should do is to start an account with Google Analytics. This, in my opinion, is one of the best tools to gauge your traffic. It is immensely detailed, telling you how many people are visiting your website, where they are coming from, what pages they are visiting, how did they discover your website, even how long they spent there. If ever you want to be very sure how well your website is doing, get Google Analytics.

Let's say you have Google Analytics installed, and the report is crappy. In a whole week, only a few people visit your website. That's when that awful, sinking feel sets in. What have you done wrong? Why doesn't the search engine find your website? What can you do to ensure that they discover it?

The next thing you should install is Google Webmaster Tools. Yes, I am recommending applications by Google. After all, if you want traffic to your website, it is most likely than not that the traffic will be coming from Google. So what better way than to use the tools that Google provides. I use them myself, and I find they terrific. With Google Webmaster Tools, you will be able to tell Google what are all the pages on your website. This you do by submitting a Sitemap. You can create a sitemap manually, but I would recommend that you use a software to create it for you. The software I use is called XML-Sitemap. By using it, I am assured that my sitemap contains no typos that will confuse Google. XML-Sitemap is free online version for websites with less than 500 pages, but I bought mine, as my websites have run into over a thousand page. I find it so wonderful in helping me create by site map. It even tells me where are the broken links that I have, so I can go to fix it immediately. And now, comes the important part of this article:

Why should your website be successful?

So you have signed up for Google Analytics. You have signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, and you have created your sitemap using XML-Sitemap. Now listen guys, all that does not guarantee that your website will be successful. They are just tracking tools and reporting tools. If your website is crap, they'll tell you exactly what it is. And honest to goodness, I have been shown so many websites, I cannot begin to tell you the number of bad websites there are out there, and I wonder why so many people waste so much time putting up such crap on the web. But let me tell you this: you do not need to waste time creating a bad website. Learn to do it correctly, right from the beginning.

If you have not yet started a website, the first thing you have to do is to decide what you want to write about. If you have already started a website, and cannot understand why it isn't successful, what you need to do now, is to ask yourself, why should your website be successful. Let's start with the subject. What are you writing about?

If you are writing about your personal life, and things that happen to you, I have to say, you are in for a tough time. It's fine to write a personal blog or website if you are doing it for fun. But unless that your life is so extraordinary, and your writing is so lively or humorous or entertaining, you are unlikely to rise above the thousands and thousands of personal websites and blogs out there. Nobody except your friends and family (assuming you allow them to read it) will ever be interested in your life. If you want to be successful out there, you need to win the race within your niche. Personally, I feel it is easier to win a lottery or to be struck by lightning, than to be successful writing about your own personal life. Of course there are people out there who have become very successful writing about whatever happens to them in their daily life. There are people who win lotteries too. But they are the minority.

It would be easier to succeed if your subject is something you are passionate about. Is there a particular hobby or interest that you have? Could be be perhaps gardening, cooking, US history, optometry, or something or other? Before you pluck a subject and rush to create a website about it, let me tell you that you can still fail miserably. What you need to do, is to show on your website that you are the Subject Matter Expert. In other words, when people read the articles in yourself, they can feel you know what you are talking about.

Some of you will moan and say, "But I'm not an expert in anything!" It's okay. But are you willing to spend the time to read and to research and to find out that particular subject, so that you gain the expertise to write a website about it? If your answer is yes, then you stand a chance to succeed in that particular subject. If your answer is no, then perhaps you are not sufficiently passionate about the subject to be successful writing it. On the other hand, you may be very passionate about a subject, but still find that it is very difficult for you to write about it. "I'm not good at writing!" you may say. If that is the case, you have to find a way to break down that particular barrier. Buy a book on creative writing. Attend a course. Polish your grammar. Do whatever is necessary.

How useful is your website?

Let's assume writing is not a problem for you. Also, you have a subject in mind that you are going to write about (and it's not a personal website). Now, what's the next barrier to your success?

How useful is your website? To answer that question, you need to understand why people visit websites. Do you know why?

People visit websites because they are looking for information. Is your website providing them the information they are looking for? How well is your website answering their question? Let's say you write a website on growing orchids. Why should anybody read your website on growing orchids? For one thing, they are probably interested in growing orchids, and they are looking up information on that subject. They use Google or some other search engine, type "growing orchids", and get a list of search results.



Look at the search results in the example above. The first result has the words "Growing Orchids" in the title. So does the second. Does your website also has "Growing Orchids" in the title?

Now, let's assume the person is not only interested in growing orchids, he is interested in growing a particular type of orchid. Say Dendrobium. Let's assume that he was able to find your website on growing orchids, and now, having reached it, he looks for information on Dendrobium. It isn't there. So what does he do? He probably will use the search engine again, and search for Dendrobium. And you have lost a visitor. What I am trying to say is that, if your website lacks depth, you will not be able to hang on to your visitor long. Yes, eventually every visitor will leave your website, no matter how indepth your information. However, while he is there, you want to (you need to) take the opportunity to show him that you are the Subject Matter Expert, and you have all the information he needs on that subject. So, let's say he looks for information on "growing Dendrobium", and it's there. Fertiliser for Dendrobium? There. Dendrobium hybrids? There. Dendrobium suppliers? There. How does he feel? I bet you, if he is a person interested in that particular subject, and you are able to provide him all the details, he will be most impressed. He is done reading about Dendrobium. He wants to know about a different orchid. Do you have information on Cattleya? Oh, it's there. And Vanda, and Phalaenopsis, and so many other different types of orchid. It's there, and there, and there. Wow. He doesn't have time to read everything, but being passionate about orchids, he will bookmark your page so that, the next time he wants to know something about orchids, he will return to it again and again. You are his orchid genie in the bottle.

How to write a successful website? Write about something that is informative and indepth. And that there would be people interested to read about. But what to write about? Should your website be about orchids in general, or Dendrobiums, or a particular species of Dendrobium? The more specific your topic, the narrower your readership. There will be less that you can write about. On the other hand, if you write a general topic, there is more to cover, of course, but it will be more difficult to write indepth. It would be good if you can find how how many people there are who are interested in your prospective topic, before you start working on it, wouldn't it? Well, the good news is, there is a way, to find out.

Let me introduce you to the Site Built It Action Guide. This is a 10-part guide that takes you step by step towards creating your website. It will in particular show you applications that you can use to track how many times people have searched for a particular subject in the past, giving you a clue as to how popular the subject you intend to write about. There is so much within this Action Guide that is so useful to me, when I build my websites, and I hope you will find it useful to you also.