From Concept to Going Live Professional Website Design: What to Expect, Part 2

Value Equals Visits

Once you have your future website's purpose finalized, the next step is to plan the content. There are some solid reasons to give a lot of consideration to the content value of your site. Additionally, there are several mediums you can employ to display and share your content. By planning from the start to include these elements, you will insure a successful website.

Let's first focus on why providing good, substantial content is critical.

Give Them Something To Talk About

Currently, search engine algorithms place a lot of value on fresh, original, well-written content. For example, Google has a tool called “PageRank.” This tool is designed mainly for people who are browsing the Internet, but of course it is of interest to site owners as well who fret about their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings. This tool ranks the relevance of a website on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best. According to SEO expert Jenny Evans, this tool specifically looks at incoming links to your site, and the quality of the websites where those links originate. It also takes into account apparent techniques to cheat the system, such as linking to “link farms” or buying and selling links. (See Jenny's article Improving Page Rank for SEO Writers.) To get the page rank tool, you can download the Google Toolbar from Install Google Toolbar. For specific questions about about the PageRank tool, refer to Toolbar Support/PageRank. Additionally, today's best web designers are making websites W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) compliant. This is relevant to content since the coding of such sites is done in a way that insures search engine inquiries pay more attention to content and don't get lost in the website code. (See Design Standards Insure Website Success.)

Thus, if you are being graded on people legitimately linking to you, it makes sense that you need to provide them with something worth reading and sharing, something they will want to link to.

Now that you know why you should provide good content, let's discuss how to present it on your website.

Core Page Content Must Sizzle

First, you will want to include salient information on the core pages of your site. To do this, go back and think about the purpose of your site. (See Part I, A Website with Purpose.) Think about why you are passionate about that purpose, and why you can fulfill that purpose better than anyone else. Your unique nature is what makes your site worthwhile. So, allow yourself to come through. Be different. Be daring. Be yourself. Too often, web owners gloss over the content, or resort to repeating information that is already on the web. Take time to dig deeply into your passion and find what you are excited about. What is it that you think is interesting or important about your purpose? Don't be overly worried about trying to impress the readers on the Internet whom you want to link to you. Instead, just write with passion. If you do so, you'll find that people will be attracted to your enthusiasm.

Structuring your content in a way that is web-friendly is important, too. If you are unfamiliar with web style, hire a writer to help you. At HIT Web Design, the staff of web writers follows very specific style guidelines to insure the text they write for clients is SEO optimized. This includes careful use of keywords, proper structure of page titles and page descriptions, streamlined copy, concise style, calls to action, and headings. These writers have, in fact, written many blogs that you can refer to for help if writing your own text.

For example, consult the following.

Get Visitors to Read Your Website Text... Use Headings.

Time for a Workout: Trim Down Your Copy

The Call to Action

Informative Writing and Web Writing Skills

Use Free Tools to Optimize Website Copy

Quality Content Improves SEO, Search Engine Ranking

Include Social Networking, or Sit and Twiddle your Thumbs

In addition to the core pages of your site, you'll want to plan on incorporating news articles, blog articles, and social networking elements. By planning to include these additional content sources from the start in your website, you will insure that your site will cast a wide net and gain a following of readers. Be sure to read the HIT Blog article “Why you should get a Facebook and Twitter account even if you hate them, where you will read about how tweets and updates, if they are interesting, will be re-tweeted or re-updated, thus exposing your site to even more potential viewers at a very quick pace. This exposure is priceless in helping you fulfill the purpose of your site. It's also, quite frankly, fun to see the analytic reports to find out how many are visiting, when they are visiting, and from where they come.

Blogs and news articles, when appropriately written with interesting, relevant information, will keep people coming back to your site again and again. Eventually, you will be considered an expert or quality source for information, and that's when the resulting links to your site will merit high rankings in search engine results.

As you can see, you can't buy your way to the top. Instead, you have to earn it by providing enriching, quality material to the Internet audience. When you plan your website, be sure to include provisions for well-written core content, blogs articles, news articles, and social networking to insure your new website achieves the attention it deserves.

• Google's PageRank tool encourages website owners to provide good content.

• Write with passion to encourage others to appreciate what makes your site's purpose valuable.

• Hire a writer if you don't feel up to the task of creating quality content for your website.

• Plan to include social networking in your website, or plan on twiddling your thumbs.