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Last Revised: 18th August 2000
Thank You for Visiting
This is not an ordinary list of get rich quick schemes, or how to get millions of hits to your site within a few days. Plenty of such webmaster sites are full of links to such material, and I have certainly looked at some of them. My own view is that there is considerably more to creating and maintaining a popular website than relying on the latest marketing fads and techniques. The opinions expressed here are based on my own experience as an amateur webmaster. Even the professionals are still learning, partly because the Internet in its present form is so new, and partly because it is developing so quickly.
There are no flashing banners and logos on this section of the page, though you will find some elsewhere on my site. Some of them lead to very useful webmaster resources. For those of you who are terminally addicted to animated banners and logos, there are a few at the bottom of the page. Hopefully they will have loaded by the time you finish reading this personal review of how to provide a successful site.
This page is not intended to be a detailed catalogue of webmaster resources, more an overview of some of the principles that I believe to be useful. The approach is light-hearted rather than severely technical. Most of the techniques described here are fairly simple, and could be derived from that increasingly rare commodity, common sense!
| Quality Content | Get Noticed! | Easy Navigation | Be Visible | Be Available |
| Site Tracking | Involve Visitors | Regular Updates | Do Persevere | Enjoy Yourself! |
This commandment is fundamental. If you want to develop a site that will attract visitors and encourage them to return, then you need Quality Content. Of course both the terms "Quality" and "Content" are relative, and much will depend on what you are trying to achieve. Perhaps a suitable comparison would be with other sites in the same category. I look for something original, and a personal touch in a web site but I recognise that as being a personal preference. Know your subject, and present it reasonably well. Ask your family, colleagues and friends for ideas and feedback. Ask your visitors for feedback!
Surfers move on quickly! Generally, at least where telephone charges exist, we can get impatient with pages that don't load, pages that load at a snail's pace, and pages that once loaded do not immediately grab the attention. It is vitally important to have some fast-loading text somewhere near the top of the screen, right under the ubiquitous advertising banners. If your site is about Cats, make sure that there is a prominent reference to Cats near the top of your page. It is as simple as that. Don't bother with a 70 Kilobyte picture of your favourite pet instead - save that for later on, otherwise your visitors will probably be gone long before the image has loaded. At least give visitors something to read while any pictures are loading!
Surfers like clicking on things! Offer a prominent link to a Site Map, a page which gives an impressive list of all the pages on your site - provided you update it occasionally! There's no harm in offering an invitation to visitors to bookmark your site either. Surfers may just do that, before hurrying on, and they may return to have a decent look at your site later on. Text links are fine, but don't put them too close to clickable banners and logos that lead elsewhere - for some reason surfers have an uncanny knack of clicking their way out of your site if you give them half a chance!
Very few visitors are going to come to your site, unless they can find you. There are two main ways of attracting visitors to your site and these are via Search Engines and Links from other web sites. Search Engine submission is an important element of site-promotion, but do not believe the hype that most traffic comes from Search Engines. It depends very much on the type of site.
Submitting a site to the Search Engines is very simple. Somewhere on the main page you will find a link with "Add URL" or "Submit your site", and then you follow the instructions. Some services will allow you to submit to several Search Engines at the same time.
If you have a specialised site, it is worth searching to see if there is a Search Engine that caters for your special interest. You are more likely to attract an audience interested in your online material.
Although a submission to the major Search Engines and Directories is well worth the effort, it is also important to contact webmasters with similar sites to your own - they may be willing to trade links with you.
Once you get some visitors, some of them will send you email - hopefully praising your wonderful site, but perhaps being critical of some aspect of your online masterpiece. Any feedback (good or bad) is better than none. In my experience, visitors appreciate a response to their comments, and many of their suggestions are very helpful. Email (despite what some people believe) is not an urgent medium for communication, so you do not need to cancel your holidays to be able to reply immediately! You can start up a Mailing List to encourage your visitors to return.
This is not a variety of stalking, but an important part of research into how to improve your site and your visibility. A hit counter gives you a rough idea of how many visitors you are receiving. It is a matter of preference as to whether or not to display the counter on your site. For more detailed information you need to track how your visitors reach your site. Many sites allow public viewing of their statistics, and you can get plenty of useful ideas from studying where they receive their visitors from!
Generally visitors like to interact with a site, even if it is a personal home page. You can either write your own scripts, (like the one I use to calculate a horoscope online), or there are many sites which will encourage you to incorporate their own interactive elements into your own site. For sites that provide a service, this is even more important, as you will want visitors to return frequently.
Web sites become stale if they are not updated occasionally. Even if the nature of the site is such that the content does not need to change very often, it is important to check that your links are still valid, and you can always change a picture occasionally.
Unless you are lucky enough to be a celebrity, your site is not going to get millions of visitors per week. It takes time for sites to become noticed, and even longer for them to become popular. However, if you have some original content, the traffic will come. As an example, one of the web sites that I author received many more hits once I had registered the site with Netscape Search and AOL. It suddenly occurred to me one day that although I tend to use Internet Explorer, many surfers use Netscape. It pays to think of various ways to reach your intended audience.
This is probably the most important commandment of them all. It can be frustrating trying to encourage visitors, and even more frustrating when there are technical problems. A sense of perspective and good humour is important at all times! One fairly benign way of building traffic is to use the Clickthru Network. You gain credits for looking at other sites, and people visit your own site in return. Not only do you have the opportunity to see a whole range of web sites, you can learn considerably from looking at how other webmasters design their sites.
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Last Revised: 18th August 2000
Thank You for Visiting