Website Design

Here are a couple of general rules about website design. People visit your website because they are looking for something. They came because your domain name intrigued them or they read something wherever they found you, be it PPC (pay per click) or article directory. Or it could be they just want your phone number or find out what your hours are. The important thing is when they get there you need to keep them there. You will keep them there if you have a content rich site that provides them with a lot of information they are looking for. Speaking of keeping them there, some people tout the income potential of Google Adsense. The problem with adsense as I see it, you only make a few pennies if someone clicks on an ad from your site but what you have done is give them a reason to leave. So a good rule of thumb. Avoid clickable links which give people a reason to leave your site.   

Content is a prime element of a good website. Like I said it keeps people on your site and makes them want to come back again and again. That content could be a lot of interesting products or useful information. The search engines are going to rate information higher than products so you should focus on information at first. Try to have an article page on your site and add 2 or 3 articles a week. You can never have too much content and again, this will help draw people to your site and make them want to back. Obviously, your articles should be relevant to your theme and here again if your theme is an area of interest to you, it should be easy for you to write your own articles. You can also find additional articles free to use on article directories. 

Your website should be keyword rich relevant to your theme. Keywords are words that relate to the theme of your site and search engines use them to rank your site. Keywords are a little to complex to go into here, I would suggest search out free information on the web concerning keywords. 

Your website must be easy to navigate so people can find things and it also must be easy to read and understand. You should match the technical level of your information to your target audience. So if you are trying to target engineers, then obviously you want technical articles. If you are writing articles on quilt making try to make them easy to understand for all readers. If you are writing advanced articles try to keep them separate from general articles and preface them as a more advanced article. 

Try to avoid loading your site up with a bunch of links and click throughs. Search engines frown on sites that are heavy with links. My web design software is written especially for internet marketing and it has analysis tools so each page can be analyzed for word count, number of links, the number of times a keyword appears and an analysis of the required grade level to understand its content.