Dr. Evoy has distilled down how to build a succesful web business that will stand the test of time. c = content First off why is the internet so popular ? Access to information. If the mantra for real estate agents is “location, location, location”, then for people setting up a web site on the Net it’s “information, information, information”. His point is that you have to “specialize” or target a niche on the Net. There are simply too many bigger and better websites that tackle general ideas, or have massive off-line budgets to drive people to their website for you to compete. But if you have a tight, theme based website then it’s much easier to go after more underserved markets.
So step 1 would be to find a topic you are passionate about and are knowledgable about and build a site around that. p = presell What’s the most important skill to master if you want a successful web business ? It’s the ability to presell. You do that by honing your writing skills. It’s not quite like a sales letter, which don’t get me wrong, is an important way to close people, but preselling is more about the ability to build a relationship with a reader. This is often why sales letters tell a mini-story as they weave the sales letter. To do that you have to be able to write in a way that is palatable to your readers. Here’s an example of his wisdom.
Retinal studies have shown that web surfers actually avoid banners – yes they actually look away from them ! And yet how often do you see them on web pages ? Talk about conditioned avoidance. When you use in-content text links (text links that are part of the web page written content) people are more likely to click on the link. Here’s another gem. Don’t create one great big sales site. Think about it from the visitors perspective. They come for information and all they get is a sales pitch – they’re “outta there”. You have to build up credibility and likability wiht your visitor, which you can only do with a content rich (free) web site. If you want, visit the rest of the parent website – it just offers alot of free ideas and info for homeschoolers. But I know that being a homeschooler can be challenging for families becuase they very often sacrifice two incomes to have one parent stay at home to teach.
Now that’s great, but with today’s technology and a little bit of effort, it is possible to have a new stream of internet income flowing into the family. So I introduce these ideas to a more new receptive audience after I have shared as much info as I can about a subject we are mutually interested in. Plus – I speak their language. I know where homeschooling parents are coming from. It’s my niche. t = traffic After you have some great content and have written with the intention to build a relationship, you need to start building traffic. This is where it can get a little technical, unless you use a service like Sitesell to automate this process for you. But I’ll do my best to explain how a webpage is found by the search engines. Say, just for kicks, one of your topics on your website www.it-is-not-easy-being-green.com was “frog leg recipes” because you found it to be a kew word (phrase) that you could use in your tight niche, theme focused website. This web page should focus entirely on that key word/phrase “frog leg recipes”. You would want your html file name for the web page to read: www.it-is-not-easy-being-green.com/frog-leg-recipes.html Right off the bat, if some searches for “frog leg recipes” the search engine will know this page is out there.
The next thing is the page title. This is the title that appears at the top of the web page. Search Engines give special emphasis to these words when ranking for relevance. And when they return their search results to searchers, they display your Page Title, exactly the way you write it, as a link to your page. You may want your page title to read: “Mouth Watering Frog Leg Recipes”. The descriptor “mouth watering” is a great lead in to the key word phrase “frog leg recipes”. By the way, it’s also good to capitalize the words but not all the letters as that comes across like you’re shouting at some one. The next part is the key words “frog leg recipes”. Finally you have the description of the web page. Here’s a quote from the Sitesell guide to building web pages: “Think about your Description as an advertisement you are writing for your page. But realise that your human visitors will not see it on your site’s page. Engines use your Page Information’s Description to create the description in the listing on a search results page. The Description forms the second half of what searchers see in a Search Engine’s listings and your Page Title forms the first half. So all the rules of good copywriting apply. Compel the reader to click to your page. Say you come up with “Boil ’em, fry ’em and saute’em, frog leg recipes for great viddles”. Make sure the Description is attractive, without being misleading. A gentle, good-natured tease will do well. Provide a lead-in to some information that your potential visitor can’t live without. Don’t disappoint.” So when someone does a google search for “frog leg recipes” they should see the the higlighted link: Mouth Watering Frog Leg Recipes
Boil ’em, fry ’em and saute’em, frog leg recipes for great viddles. See how the key word was used again ? That’s important for the search engines to give you a high rank for those looking for frog leg recipes. Later on the actual page, you will want to use the kew word phrase “frog leg recipes” several times to ensure the search engines figure out that your web page is what people who wnat to know more about “frog leg recipes” are looking for. These are complex algorithms that are just trying to figure out what the average surfer wants (i.e content) and give it to them. Can you see why content is as important as web page search engine optimization. For instance if I had a page that just repeated the words “frog leg recipes” a thousand times do you think someone genuinely looking for frog leg recipes would spend much time on my page ? I hope you answered “no”. Like I said, I don’t particuarly like HTML but here’s all the gory details: You can find the html to alter at the top of the web page between the words and . Mouth Watering Frog Leg Recipes
