If you want to build a successful website, do the following things. According to an ex-employee of Google, this will work good. Always!
1. Add content
Add content, add content, add content. Before you even register your domain, you should have enough ideas to build 100 pages on your site. Start brainstorming and see what you can come up with in 10 minutes. If that's not enough to fill 50 pages, consider not building the site at all. Having lots of content is important.
2. A simple design is better
The text content should outweigh the html content. Stay away from heavy flash, java, javascript, etc. Don't add to much stuff like 'best viewed with'... Your website should be viewable with any browser. Keep it clean and professional.
3. Keep the pages small
Smaller is better. Keep it under 15k if you can. Your site should be fast loading, or people will leave. Speed is everything. Next to content, that is. Keeping it under 10k or 5k if you can. Difficult, but people love fast sites. Throw away all the trash on your pages.
4. Content length
Put a new page online every day of about 200 to 500 words. Go to the overture keyword suggester to find ideas of what to write about. Spell check your content. Search engines can do it, and so should you. If you have a blog, go for article-like posts as opposed to the personal diary kinds of posts.
5. Use keywords
Use your keywords in the following places: title, description tag, heading, url, once bold, once italic and once high on the page.
6. Link to other sites
Put 2 links to other, high ranking pages on your site. They should be relevant to the content of that page and use keywords as your link. Don't add every link that's requested. Check their relevance first.
Put links from one page to other relevant pages on your own site. Again: use keywords as your link.
By Eric Mitchell
