Thousands of new Web Sites go on-line every single day. This article is to give you direction on what it takes. Whether you want to create a small personal site or a large commercial site the steps are the same. It is the scale that will change.

Back in the early to mid 1990′s people used to say (like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams) “if you build it, they will come.” There were few web sites with not much on them and there were many topics yet to be filled by web sites. The new saying is “If you build it, no one will know!” Web sites today are competing against MILLIONS of other web sites. And each is competing for a number of minutes of attention of visitors. To be clear there currently (September 2011) are a total of 485,173,671 websites on the Internet!

There is one word which we consider the most important word on any web site. We will repeat it often. The word is “Content.” Content is the information, text, pictures, videos, music, sounds, etc. that visitors to your site will spend time reading, looking or listening to. If you have no content there is no reason for visitors to spend any time on your web page. Content is also what defines your site.

When it comes to major mistakes in new web sites it is here. The mistake is not a poor site design but the opposite, Over Design. Take a look at some of the top web sites on the Internet. Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Amazon are not only popular but profitable. Most are very simple designs indeed.

Content is king. Bigger graphics, music, multimedia slideshows, fancy code, have nothing to do with content. They do make a site slow to use. Consider 28% of Web traffic in the US is still on dial-up. When you add those extras you are keeping those people from using your site. Its a numbers game. If you reduce the numbers who can potentially use your site then you are reducing the potential customers and users. With competition among web sites so high you can not afford to lose visitors. People come for the content and not the bells and whistles. Not that you should eliminate them completely but keep to a minimum.

Our own experience is that first time visitors must find 15-20 minutes of content oriented to the site theme. Thereafter each week should be at least 10 minutes of NEW content. If you can not keep their attention that long there are plenty (and I mean plenty) of other web sites that will. Discussion forums, classified advertising, or other visitor driven information can be the content for your web site. But you need to attract visitors Before they will create the content for you. Why post to a discussion board that has few or no posts? They will not expect a response. Why post a classified ad if no one will read the ad? You yourself have to create the content that attract visitors.

When you have the structure, you can begin on the appearance of the site. You can start this also on paper which can save a lot of time in the long run. It should be kept clean, easy to read and easy to locate the links and menus. Colors, backgrounds, layout, etc. is all a personal choice. Again, do not over design.

Most of you reading here will presume the next most important item would be the look of the web site. You would be completly wrong. It seems there is an almost direct relationship between people who place maximum importance on the look or appearance of their web site and the failure of those web sites. Some of the most visited sites are also the ugliest. So what is the next most important item? Ease of use. A cluttered site or one difficult to navigate means your website’s visitors will quickly click away.

Your first (Home) page is your landing page. It is the most important page on your site. Within an average of twelve seconds a visitor will decide whether to browse further into your site. Less is more here. If they are waiting to download music, large pictures or a video intro most will go to another web site before your page finishes loading. Also be aware people from work may leave immediatly when music or sounds begin as it is NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Remember they are supposed to be at work and don’t want their boss to catch them! Make sure your landing page clearly informs the visitor what your site is about and what they will find inside. You need to sell them on your WEB SITE here. Sell your content, service or product INSIDE your site.

Pictures and graphics can be a major part of your site. The goal is to keep their file size as small as possible. Your digital camera creates beautiful pictures at 5 Megabytes in size. This is great when printing large photos but useless on the Web. It will take aboue a minute to download on DSL or cable modem. For a dial-up user it can take over twelve minutes!!!

When designing a web site think simple. Fifth Grade simple. The New York Times and most newspapers are written for a fifth grade education. Be consistent in look. Keep links or menu choices to the same area of the page, clearly visible, not burried between graphics or text. Fonts should be the same throughout and better to stick to standard type fonts such as: Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman. Limit the choices a visitor has on a page.

Depending on the type of website try to limit choices to 5-6 per page. 12 absolute max. Too many choices confuses visitors and gets them lost. It also shows a lack of focus. If needed move extra choices to a sub-category. That being said avoid burrying the choices in page levels. If they have to click on one page to go to another page to finally get to a third page with the link they need, it is too complex. It is advantageous to keep the links, buttons, menus, etc. large enough that someone with a small screen (like a laptop) can easily click on it with a mouse. A common mistake here is too much content on the main page that the links or menu is nearly hidden. Simple.

ATTRACTING VISITORS TO YOUR WEBSITE

If you opened a storefront and located it in a back alley you will never have customers. You would need to create a strategy of marketing and advertising to attract customers. It is the same with a website which is also located in a back alley. The Internet.

As mentioned earlier the saying “if you build it, they will come” no longer works. Without Visitors your web site basically does not exist. Attracting visitors is what seperates a successful web site from a dead site. There are several things you need to use to attract site visitors. The Internet is a numbers game. Take advantage of every avenue available:

* Search Engines
* Printed Ads
* Reciprocal Links
* Link Directories
* Publicity
* Rip Offs

Search Engines are generally the basis for increasing your exposure on the Internet. Still for many sites it is not the biggest source for attracting visitors. It is important to be sure but especially for new sites it will be the least effective.

You also will want to improve the Ranking with each Search engine. This is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Everyone wants to be at the top of the search results list. There is no magic bullet for this. Results are according to various criteria and algorithms. How often the search terms exist and where on your site; In-bound links; out-bound links, relevance and hundredss of other things. Trying to out-smart these systems can be counter-productive. They have become smart enough to recognize when keywords are added only for rankings. Then they decrease your rankings accordingly called Negative Ranking. Stuffing hundreds of keywords on your site does not work. Inbound links (from other sites) is very important but they need to be from sites with relevant content. If your website is about dogs and there is a link from a site about basketball it won’t help much if at all. Once your site is indexed the most important criteria will be how fresh your content is. If your content changes frequently it moves you up. When it does not change it moves you down. Keep in mind, this all changes almost daily. Tricks that worked well last year no longer work now.

Depending on the type of Content of your site you might find distributing printed advertising advantageous. This can include signs, flyers, business cards or anything else to be passed out or displayed. Any exposure for your site is good.

Reciprocal links is where you post a link for a site and they have a link back to your site. Often these can work better than anything else but sadly, are rarely used. You need to contact websites often sending an email to the webmaster. There should never be a cost for this. Only use websites that are in some way relevant to yours. You must have a links page to place their links page. You do not need or want to place their links on your main content pages. These kind of links work real well because people have a comfort level with the site they are coming from. It is also not a random click but a specific interest.

There are millions of websites out there. There are probably tens of thousands (or more) relevant to yours. It is well worth the time to search for these sites and request a link. What helps is to create a banner for your site. Many sites will put a banner link instead of just text. Banners tend to work much better also. It does not have to be real fancy. Name of the site and a small picture is fine. There are several standard sizes for banners. A full banner is 468×60 and 28k in size but there are several other sizes in use. Best to create two versions with different colors in case a site has a background that does not work.

Link directories are indexed listings of web site links. Some are free and some are paid. Avoid the paid directories until you get larger. They are used by people like a search engine but can be browsed by category. You either submit your site (a single URL) to be approved or add it with registration. Submit only once and one URL. Most do not require reciprocal links. These will rarely help your ranking with Search engines but do generate traffic. There are tens of thousands of them. Some very active like DMOZ and some hardly visited that have no value. A trick here is before submitting enter that site’s content into Google and search. If Google does not return a listing for it then either Google felt it not worthy of being indexed or Google banned the site for some reason and you do not want your site associated with it.

Another rarely used but very effective means is participating in blogs and message forums. You do not want to appear like you are there just to advertise your site. You want to be a part of the conversations. This also can help with search engine rankings. Etiquette is to simply include a link in your signature. No sales talk or details unless specifically asked or you may get banned. It takes some work but is well worth it if you pick relevant (see a trend here?) sites.

Finally We need to cover Rip Offs. There are plenty on the Internet. There are some that advertise for a fee to put you at the top of the major search engines. The Search Engines have their own system and can not be overcome. I hear more people wasting their money on this Ripoff than any other. If they could provide what they sell then how can EVERYONE be at the top of the list when there is only room for one? They don’t work. The other things mentioned above are what does work.

Another increasingly common ripoff is where companies will provide you with “Magic keywords” specifically for your site. No such animal. Search Engines are much more sophisticated today. They “read” your Content and not keywords. Maybe you read somewhere where Content is king?

Sometimes called ‘Free for All Links’, they say they will post your link on hundreds of web sites. These companies own the hundreds of sites and have no value with search engines (usually banned by Google) and have few visitors except people paying for their service. SUCKERS!!!

Email lists. Spamming people will not generate traffic. Specific e-mail targeting can work but be very careful who you are sending to. Be very careful. Sending spam (even if a service sends it for you) and you may find your hosting service disables your site. There are Federal laws against spam. We do provide a real E-mail management list applications to send out legitimate E-mail newsletters and marketing messages. There are great ways of marketing through E-mail and also very bad ways.

Most of the ways to attract visitors has little or no cost. But it does take work. More work than creating your site. And do not think it ends. It is a constant process. Finding new places for your link or banner. Optimizing web pages better for search engines. A web site can never have too many visitors. It is always not enough.
New websites used to always have a “Under construction” graphic or message. The truth is websites are always under construction. You will always want to change the look even if just a different color. Add a new feature. Change the menus. It really never ends. Hopefully this article has given you a starting point. The rest is up to you.