How To Build a Popular Website According to Google

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.

7. Link to your own site

Put links from one page to other relevant pages on your own site. Again: use keywords as your link.

8. Submit your site

Submit your site to Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, Msn, Hotbot, etc. Then forget about that for 6 months. Also submit it to every single directory you can find. Do a check after 6 months and resubmit if you're not listed.

9. Log and track

Most hosts provide these. Don't use a lame graphic counter. Check where your visitors are coming from to find out what traffic methods work best for your site.

10. Write for people

People are not coming to your site for your content. They are coming for their content. Try to write as if you are writing to one specific person, such as a friend of yours who's interested in the same topic. Don't try to write for 'all of your visitors'.

11. Stay ahead

If you know that something big will come out in a few months, build a page about it now. It gives search engines time to index that page so they can feed it to the growing anticipating crowd.

12. Add more content

This is so important: keep adding content. Do this for a year and your site will be a top ranking website within one year. You could've been there now, if you started last year. So start now, so you'll be there next year. You'll thank yourself (and me) later.