Writers, you’re puzzling over this whole website thing. What kind of website should you have? How should you use it? And how does it help?
The bottom line is that you want people to search online and find you. That’s the beauty of the Internet. No longer do you have to interrupt people while they are reading a magazine article (with a nearby ad) or while they are eating dinner (with a telephone call), hoping a few of the people being interrupted are looking for just what you offer and don’t mind the interruption.
Instead, people are out there looking for what you offer, and you are able to intercept them at just the right moment.
For that to work, of course, you and what you offer have to be findable with a search engine.
Here’s one type of website that’s hardly findable at all: one that operates like a billboard, providing information that seldom changes. This type of website generates very few incoming links, where someone has linked to it. It’s those incoming links that makes Google take notice of your site and rank it higher in the search listings. You don’t want to be the 4000 slots down in the Google search page, or even 400. You want to be in the top 10, if you want people to find you.
So, what kind of website will help you do that?
Two hints: a website containing a blog, and blog articles with the right keywords.
To be continued next Monday!