The most popular way to build a professional website is with targeted ads and content. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? It may sound simple but if you look long enough online, you will find sites that are absolutely disgusting. It saves me time and helps me cover a lot more ground.
For nearly a decade, Mr. Flanders has worked in web design and has published several books. This website is a great education in notto do. There are many examples to show offenders as well as reasons why. This is not Common Sense 101 stuff. These beginner mistakes are avoidable. There are many more mistakes that Flanders has not covered
This isn’t something we do because of our artistic taste. It’s fine to put together a page with just text and no graphics. Craiglist is a great example. Design is not important because your site will make money.
You can also find links to other sites.
- To be able to see the ads.
- To make them feel at ease clicking on the ads and visiting the sites advertised.
What is the difference between “White Hat SEO” and “Black Hat SEO?”
Try this: Search for a high-volume keyword (I chose “college scholarships”), and then click the link at the bottom to go further back. We are looking for the worst pages, those that rank #800 or more. You’ll soon find a site like this:
This page is dedicated to college scholarships. This page contains all the information you need about college scholarships. If you are looking for information on college scholarships, our college scholarship resource will help you find them. College scholarships are complex. Many people seek information about college scholarships. This page is another way to learn everything you need about college scholarships …”.
You could fill a page with anywhere from 600 to 800 of the most useless words known to man, and have ads on the side. This is a bad idea! Search engines have been around for so long that everyone knows when they come across a suspicious site. Your site’s low page rank is known by the search engine and it blocks, bans, or cripples it. Visitors who visit your site between the time you put it up and Google canning it will probably leave within a week.
Yet, you can still find keyword formulas that guarantee “guaranteed 500,000 views per day!” Link farming (having a whole) is the same.
“Meta-tag Voodoo” (putting deceptive text in the meta tags of a page to fool search engines), and all sorts of scams, schemes, and methods. This is the exact same thing as people who think they know how to cheat at the roulette tables in Las Vegas. The casinos have seen every trick before. Search engines are the same.
These methods are collectively known as “Black Hat SEO”, which is optimizing a webpage for search engines in a dishonest and deceitful way. Contrary to this, “White Hat SEO” is where we create our site first for people, and then add search engines as additional consideration.
Content
There are three types of content:
- Blogs
- Articles
- Visitors-driven content (bulletin boards and community blogs, etc.
- Sales letters (for supporting content in selling a product)
In a later chapter, we will discuss sales letters and selling products.
Blogs
Do you want to drive traffic? A blog is the best choice. Blogs can be your best friend. Blogs are simple to maintain, can be customized with prepackaged software, and the best part is that they use RSS to drive visitors to your site.
RSS stands for “really easy syndication”. RSS is automatically enabled in most blog software. This works like this: Every time you publish a blog post, the RSS system collects all relevant data and ‘pings’ various blog indexing service providers. These services will automatically provide links throughout the Internet and make your content accessible through news reading software. The search engines index your blog automatically when they find the ‘ping’ through blog indexes.
It all happens automatically Simply install the blog software and follow the defaults. Your web host will often offer some assistance.
Already have blog software installed? WordPress, Live Journal, and B2Evolution are the most popular blog software.
A blog post can be anything. It is a blog post that can be used as a journal or column in a newspaper. Blogs and niche focus are inextricably linked. Either you can manage your blog posts yourself (if possible, send an email to make a post). You can hire a professional blogger to do the job (lowest work on the Internet).
Here are two places you can find inspiration if you need blog content ideas.
Stuff-a-Blog
This is a free service that allows you to enter a topic in a post and it will provide you with images from Flickr, links, images from Flickr, a map if any location is mentioned, the most recent news stories, icons, and many more. Although I wouldn’t create a site entirely based on Stuff-a-Blog content, it’s great for filling in the gaps between posts when inspiration is lacking.
Blogger Search
Blogger.com has its own search engine. Enter your topic to see a list of blogs discussing that subject. Browse for inspiration.
Articles
Articles should be between 500 and 800 words long. They should also be written in a natural style on the topic so that visitors can actually read them. The key focus should be mentioned in the content at least two times. This will allow for relevant search hits. An article, unlike a blog post, is a static, stable web page. Ads will be placed at the top or side of your article, just like a blog. A group of articles should be linked to an index page. Typically, 20 articles will suffice to allow search engines to index your site for that topic.
Web surfers expect articles to be written in a more formal tone than blogs. If you are an expert on the topic, you may be able to write them yourself. You can also hire a freelance writer. You can also visit one of the many free article submission websites.
Ezine Articles
It works like this: Articles are already written and saved here for free! The only problem is that you must include the link at bottom of the article. The link will take you to the author’s site, usually their site. This might not be the best way to go. Let’s say your niche is wine. You publish articles about wine written by someone else who has a wine website and links to your competition. You don’t get paid for the referral and you have encouraged the visitor not to click on your ad. You can still post content if you are desperate for cash and content.
Temporarily, free articles. However, most webmasters will hire a freelance writer to do this job (and it is often cheap).
Finally…
Visitor-Driven Content
It is better to show you some examples.
You are probably familiar with Digg or Slashdot. These two sites are hugely popular and share a lot in common. They started out focusing on niche “geeks”, but they have since expanded to general news sites. Each site is a bit more than a bulletin board system. They have rules for joining, commenting, and submitting stories. Other members are empowered to moderate comments and submit submissions. These are examples of the “social web”, where you can add friends to your list, and then any submissions from your friend get bookmarked for you.
There are many other methods that can be used, including sites like Yahoo or Delphi forums. These forums go back as far back as the early Usenet and BBS days. This is a completely different process than web authoring. Although you cannot be a complete beginner and achieve the same success as Digg, many web hosts will provide basic message-board software that is similar to a blog system.
Niche marketing is where niche topics are most useful. Others won’t. Your target audience is important Because they are experts in a particular topic, their audience will be passionate about the topic and have something to share. These are the pros and cons of visitor-driven content.
Pro
- Free content from your visitors!
- The site can grow and become a focal point of the culture in your niche once it is promoted. It can stimulate debate and help people answer each other’s queries – it can even be fun, as long as you engage your visitors.
- In some cases, you may be allowed to charge membership.
- A good system will run itself once it is established. For example, you can create a peer-moderation program so members can manage undesirables.
Con
- Security risks – Are you prepared to protect yourself against identity theft, PHP injection attacks, and attempts to hack into your site?
- Spam – To allow public comment, you must fight spammers constantly. It is quite annoying if you don’t have experience with it. Every week, some idiot comes along to your site and offers a free ride.
- Flamers and trolling – trouble visitors who just want to cause trouble and start a fight. You will see the duelists about 25 times. You’ll be very tired of arguing with each other, and neither one will back down.
- It is difficult to get it off of the ground. Nobody wants to be the first one to join. When you have many members, the rest will follow. You can’t have visitors if you don’t work hard enough.
Now for the ads…
Advertisements should not be flashy. Avoid irritating pop-ups and bouncing flashers. Each of the screenshots I provided is highlighted. These are the places you should place your ads. In each case, you can choose to display the ads as plain text or graphic banners. The ads are not too obvious, but they are easy to locate.
There are two types of ads: content-focused and straight static. Static ads are similar to banners for a site or product. It’s as simple as that: you pick it and place it. Content-focused ads are more popular, especially for blogs or bulletin boards. They scan your page and analyze it to generate ads that are most appealing to visitors. These ads can change as your content changes. Google Adsense is the most popular, but you should not let that stop your curiosity about similar services offered by Yahoo!, MSN and Amazon.
While each program will determine the payment plan, there will often be a code to follow in order to continue your business.
Whew! This chapter covered a lot. You should have at least a basic understanding of advertising and content as a model for a web-based business. This topic is too vast to cover in a single book. But we must move on to a better way to profit from niche markets: creating your own product!
