Eleven Steps to Webmaster Success: The Crash Course

Apr 29
17:15

2008

Will Kalif

Will Kalif

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By a successful website I mean you get search engine traffic to your site and earn money in the process. To make a website or blog successful you need to be attractive to both the search engines and to people. This article shows you exactly how to do it in 11 easy steps.

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Part 1: Understanding what you do and what it’s all about

Critical Rule for Success – Understand that what you are is a publisher! Your job is to publish information,Eleven Steps to Webmaster Success: The Crash Course Articles ideas, articles, tutorials and all kinds of good stuff your web visitor will be interested in. Think of yourself as a newspaper or magazine except your pages are not made of paper they are made of web!

There are three components to having a successful website and you have to cover all three reasonably well if you want your publishing endeavor to be a success. I integrate all three of these things in this crash course so you will do it naturally and intuitively as you build you blog or website.

Component #1: You, as a publisher have to provide a continuous stream of useful and valuable content to your web visitors. How many newspapers or magazines just publish one or two issues? Nope, keep it going.

Component #2:  Your content has to be of real value to your web  visitors. You can’t just publish junk.

Component#3:  Your content has to be formatted in ways that the search engines see the value in it and understand it. This way you will get the good search engine ranking you deserve for having good content.

Part 2: The Process, Or What to Do!

1)      Pick a subject or topic that you are passionate about or have a lot of information about. It could be anything from carpentry to telescopes, medieval warfare, stuffed animals etc… It is important that you are passionate about it because there is work involved and if you love the subject it won’t be work, it will be a joy and a learning experience ---and you are more prone to keep going – keeping going is necessary according to component #1: Keep adding fresh content.

2)      Choose a domain name or blog that has your subject keywords in it. If your subject is teddy bears then your domain name should have those words or related words in it. Something like www.teddy-bear-collectors.com or if you are using a free blog then http://teddybearcollectors.blogspot.com  . See what I mean? Put the subject or very related words right in the domain name. This will help the search engines understand what your site is about. Very important and very useful. The engines will give you special treatment for that subject.  And you will get listing faster.

3)      Whenever you create a new page for your website or blog always give it a good name that says what is on the page  like www.mysite.christmas-teddy-bear-ideas.htm . Never name it something like www.mysite.page1.htm I will cover this naming a little bit more.

4)      Now let’s create some content – Generate a list of ideas for articles, tutorials and other things that your visitors might be interested in.  This part is easier than it seems. Here is how to do it.  Write down a bunch of major words in your topic and make them one to four word blurbs like this: (we will stick with teddy bears)

a)      Teddy Bears

b)      Teddy Bear Gifts

c)       Making teddy bears

d)      Teddy bear prices

e)      Where to buy teddy bears

f)       Bears for children

g)      Makers of teddy bears

h)      Teddy Bear making ideas

i)        Make your own teddy bear

5)      Ok, I think you get the idea there! Now go to this url ( http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com )and type each one of your line items one at a time and print up the results. What you end up with is a great list of what people are searching for in your subject area. This is a very important step! Do not skip this step. This tells you exactly what people are looking for in your subject, and more importantly, it tells you how they are looking and what words they are typing. Now, as an example I typed in “make teddy bear” and I came up with some great results: The first item is “Make your own teddy bear”, the second is “How to make a teddy bear” and the third is “How to make a teddy bear costume. Ba-da-bing. I have a great list of projects and I know exactly what people want!              

6)      Now pick a search result that you like and that you would like to do or write about then write it! Take pictures, make notes and give it all to your web visitor. Focus on giving your web visitor the best you can do. Think about really solving the problem your visitor has. Hey, Go ahead and make a teddy bear costume, it’s your job and well, a lot of fun. 

7)      Make your project search engine friendly.  Make the subject of your article or project exactly what the search result is so If I tackle the “How to make a teddy bear costume” I call that article or project “How to Make a teddy bear Costume”!!!  And if you remember from a bit earlier when I save the blog post or web page I call it that too! So www.mysite.com/how-to-make-a-teddy-bear-costume.htm is perfect.  Naming the project and the page appropriately will cover Component #3.

8)      Now let’s do just a little bit more search engine optimization and make your page or pages really friendly to the search engines. If you are doing a webpage make sure you add a description tag that really says what the page is about. In this case something like this: This is a project that will show you how to make a beautiful teddy bear costume for children ages  2 and up.  This description will show up in the search engine listings so make sure it has both your keyword phrase “Make a teddy bear costume”, and make sure it is appealing to people.

9)      Keywords – Make sure, if you are doing a webpage you add appropriate keywords like teddy bear, make, costume and if you have a blog then add these keywords.

10)   Okay, lets monetize our site: I recommend you do this process above for at least a month before you start looking for ways to make money. You want to have a decent collection of interesting projects, ideas, articles and related stuff before you start looking for the money. Once your site or blog has lots of stuff on it then sign yourself up for google adsense and some kind of affiliate program like the Amazon Associates Program.  Put the snippets of code on your pages and you are ready to go! I suggest that if you are using amazon you go with products that you hand pick so they are exactly targeted to the subject of each web page.  It’s what I do and it works well for me.

11)   Now repeat the process and write more articles and tutorials etc… Keep the content flowing and always target it to what your web visitor wants. 

Ok, so what have we done? We have created a web publishing presence that is exactly targeted to a subject and is friendly to the search engines. People will really like your stuff and the engines will clearly understand it. In no time at all you will be getting good search engine traffic because they will love you and send people your way. I’m telling you it really works. And it is all about a subject that you are passionate about. Does it get any better than that?