-- Critical Parts of a Successful Web Site --

What are the critical parts of a successful web site?

Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT a fancy design. While visual appeal and usability are important to consider, no web site does any good if no one sees it. Trust me, if you build it, they won’t come (immediately). Thousands of surfers will not swamp our web site the moment it goes live. Second only to great content or great products, the most critical part of any web site is search engine optimization and marketing specifically designed to drive traffic to your wonderful site. It takes months to build up traffic to your site before any of the other things really matter

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO is the process of building keywords into your site so that search engines will find it relevant to keyword searches performed by people looking for something that your site offers. For example, if you have a site selling pancake syrup, a pancake lover might enter “maple syrup” into a search engine in order to discover what companies on the internet sell maple syrup. Ideally, your site would include those works frequently in its pages so that search engines would list your site. Although each of the major search engines (Yahoo!, Google, Ask Jeeves, etc.) has a slightly different way to determine relevance, careful keyword selection and placement can give your site an initial leg up.
  
• Link Building - Link Building is an integral part of SEO. The more inbound links you have, the more importance and relevance the search engines give to your site. Even if you have great keyword density and placement, it will be difficult to rank well without finding other sites which find your web site valuable enough to link to it.
  
• Content – Interesting content related to your business accomplishes two goals: 1) It gives your visitors useful information and entices them to come back for more and 2) It provides greater keyword density which will help with SEO. Depending on your site, good content might mean regular interesting articles or it might mean themed pages to give customers decorating ideas. Good content is whatever is interesting and relevant to the product or service you provide.
  
• Marketing – Although proper SEO will get your site started, you must also market your site both on and off the web to draw traffic. Offline sources of marketing include every bit of marketing you already have. Put your new web site address on business cards, letterhead, brochures, ads, signs, etc. Internet marketing includes online directories, user communities, and reciprocal links.
  

• Design – Several items go into a good design, including visual appeal, usability, navigation, and features.

  Visual appeal : Should be creative and professional without annoying distractions.

  Usability: Visitors should be able to find or do everything they expect to find or do without getting frustrated.

  Navigation: Navigation should be natural and intuitive, almost invisible to the user. Visitors should be concentrating on content, not how to get from one page to the next.

Please submit any questions or comments on this article to Debbie at Blue Spider Creations.