There are countless different factors that go into being a hit online, and some of these are of course more important than others. Some of these factors and rules in fact are ‘golden’ and can’t be bent or wavered. These are the rules and practices that must be followed if you are going to be a success and that you can’t be a hit without unless you are incredibly lucky. Here are five of them that you need to make sure you are observing if you want to make your site a hit.
Be Consistent
If you really want your site to be a hit then this is the only way to go about it. Design your site and set up the look of it and your content management system – then post every week (or better yet, every day) and consistently do your SEO. As competitors come and go and Google changes its algorithms you will have to change many aspects of your strategy in many ways, and sometimes you’ll take a hit which can be disheartening. But no matter what happens, you need to make sure you are consistent and that you keep on plugging away with your site.
Be Passionate
Most important of all is to be passionate about your blog or website and the topic you are writing on. If you genuinely find it fascinating and you do it for the love, then you are going to keep on posting regardless of how far down the SERPs you have fallen. At the same time your passion will come across in your writing, and in your discussions with potential business partners.
Quality Over Quantity
Too many webmasters seem to think that the secret to success is to generate tons of useless content that no one wants and to build billions of inbound links. Well Google let us know how it felt about that when it made its algorithm changes. Now more than ever it is crucial that you go after high quality links and that you build great content that people want to read – this is what will ensure your site provides genuine value and it’s sites that do this that Google wants to show to its visitors.
Stay Informed
And another thing that those Google algorithm changes taught us is that we can’t just rely on things to stay the same and that you really can’t take your eye off the ball. If you aren’t going to be constantly reading about new developments in the world of the web, hardware and SEO then you need to hire someone who will.
Think Long-Tail
If you’ve built a website that tells people how to run Whatsapp on their PC and you’ve bought the URL ‘Whatsapponpc’ then you might rake in a fair bit of Adsense revenue over the first year or so. However your lack of branding will mean you are never able to branch out into other things, while your narrow focus will prevent you from expanding even the content on the site. Couple this with the fact that Whatsapp will probably eventually be available on PC, or eventually disappear and you have a site that has no future. By far the more effective strategy is to build a website with a brand and a long term strategy and to make sure it’s resilient enough to stand up to all kinds of changes challenges.
John Miller is a Sydney based SEO expert and online marketing executive who is currently working for an online marketing firm - Webfirm
