Achieving Website and Internet Success

Many people create a website, upload it to the internet, and then wonder where all of the traffic is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. There are so many websites on the internet today and the competition is fierce. If your website offers a product or service that is extremely popular on the internet, the competition is even MORE fierce.

Surfers don’t just suddenly know that you have created a website. You have to promote your website, and there are many ways to accomplish this task. Successful site promotion is not a one-time effort either. Owners of successful websites promote their sites regularly. Achieving high search engine ranking is one thing. Keeping high search engine ranking is another. Competitors will constantly be chomping at your heels to catch or exceed your ranking.

One major task toward achieving high search engine ranking is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. This is a crucial step in the creation of your site. One major task site owners most often omit from their SEO plan is providing valuable content on their site(s). If you have valuable content on your site, people will want to visit. If you do NOT have valuable content on your site, you won’t have increased traffic.

Our kids have it made when it comes to school research. When I was growing up, a set of Britannica Encyclopedias in your own home was considered a luxury. My parents had five children and while money was scarce, they decided they really needed to “splurge” and get a set of Encyclopedias along with a set of volumes known as the “Books of Knowledge.” All five of us used those encyclopedias throughout our education. The problem with a set of printed encyclopedias is that the world changes daily. New history is made. Our world is a place of ever changing information. There are new discoveries, new developments. Technology changes daily, there are new medical advancements, cures and medicines surfacing all the time.

Bless my mother’s heart for all her efforts, but those books were immediately outdated the moment she proudly placed those volumes in that special bookcase she had my father make. Even so, we valued them and used them and they sufficiently served their purpose throughout our educations. When my daughter has a research paper due for school, she uses the internet. She knows that is where to get the most recent information for her project. Granted, not ALL information posted on the internet is the gospel truth, so we do need to evaluate and make judgments concerning the validity of the content we find.

What is Valuable Content? Valuable content is material others seek. I cannot even guess the number of times a day I go to my Google Search Bar and search for information. Most often I seek information on how to DO something. If I want to know how to correctly perform a certain action in HTML code, I search the internet, and 99.99% of the time I find what I need. If I want to know how to make homemade pimento cheese, I search the internet for recipes for pimento cheese. If I want to know who wrote the Harry Potter books, I search the internet for the author of Harry Potter. If I want to know who invented the cotton gin, I search the internet for cotton gin inventor.

I am not advising you to go to your site and make a page, and create the content: J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter; Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; and post a great recipe for pimento cheese. You MIGHT get a few hits, but I doubt it. Your site needs to contain RELEVANT content. Is your site about tigers and lions? Relevant content would probably involve: circuses, lions, tigers, zoos, lion trainers, lifestyles of a circus entertainer, etc. Irrelevant content might consist of peanut butter and jelly, push versus riding lawnmowers, and financial aid for college. By the way, I did an internet search on irrelevant just now to be sure of the spelling and the definition. EVERY site needs relevant content. I promise you, adding relevant content to your site will HELP you, NOT hurt you….by Laura Brown, Penney Layne Graphics