My Experience In Building A Web Site With Good Ranking

I am a software developer with over 25 years experience. However I had very little knowledge of SEO to begin with. I developed a financial application and wanted to market it via a web site. I had the classic impression that a web site should showcase your product as a back-end reference at the same time as you are marketing your product else where. In this article, I would like to share my experiences of setting up a new web site from scratch to something that I feel proud of and though not perfect, would be useful for my purposes.

I began by exploring GoDaddy web site for their offerings - learning the terms as I go. For example, I initially struggled with the definition of "hosting" and "domain". I could not define them exactly, so could not see the difference why they are 2 products offered by GoDaddy. Since the prices were not very prohibitive, I just decided to purchase whatever is recommended minimally in the process. Pretty soon I got a domain name, a hosting account, and a blank web site to begin building.

At this point, I knew things can get very involved. I cannot just make choices and back up one step, if they don't look too good. My first major decision was to say to myself - "Let's choose the simple basic schemes offered by GoDaddy and see how it looks like. Let it fly. See the results. If it doesn't work, then hire a professional."

That last phrase sounded so reassuring, and it filled me up with confidence.

I ended up with a GoDaddy Website Tonight web page and used one of their simple templates and built a ready-to-use web site. I just filled in the blanks. I couldn't be bothered with graphics and images as I didn't have any. I entered mostly text to describe my product. So I didn't really spend that much time in to making the web site look good. It came with a picture of a nice guy with a blue shirt which had nothing to do with my product.

What I did spend a lot of time on, was the correctness of any text. Grammar, spelling, sentence construction, etc should be spot on. I asked friends and family for help in correcting my work. On top of that it should be relevant to your product or topic. For me it was really comparable to good academic theses writing. Pretend that there are thousands of thesis supervisors out there who will check your text. I came up with this self-advice purely because I knew nothing else on how to build a web site. You can't go wrong with good grammar. Besides there is always that aforementioned last phrase.

What happened next? I persistently improved my web site and in quick time I was able to:
1. put nicer pictures
2. create very strong logical arguments of why my product or service is unique and useful

This resulted in a very strong judgment by Google search engines that my web site is relevant and legitimate. The keyword search that related to my product brought my web site up on the first page results within a few days of publishing.

Next, I started to register for all the Google tools and came across Google AdWords. I asked myself if Google AdWords would help me reach potential customers. My answer was: "Try it. Advertise on Pay-per-Click and see how web surfers like your site. You'll know if they are clicking or not or even if they are just bouncing off. If the web site is really pathetic then stop the AdWords and phone that professional."

And fortunately to my amazement, it worked ok. I got a lot of visits at very low bids. Most surprising of all was that the links I built for Facebook were being followed and visitors were actually registering their Likes.

For a first time web site, the Alexa ranking is around 1,000,000 and getting better every day.

By: A Elinon

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Antonio Elinon is a consultant who has worked with accountants and in his work has successfully identified what some accountants need when they use Excel. He recommends a fully integrated Excel-driven product like Data Mart for Excel (www.datamart4excel.com) when addressing the accountant's need to extract Financials from ERPs like Oracle eBS and SAP. Visit www.Datamart4Excel.com for more information.