March 18, 2009
Why Website Size Matters
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) What's New at the Shared Self Publishing Experience
Keep up with traffic figures. See how large an audience a big, write-it-yourself site can draw.
2) FEATURE ARTICLE:
Why a Website's Size Matters
It might not seem fair that a website has to be big to be effective, but it's true. Here's why.
3) Three Ways to an Effective Website
There's no reason any more to think that building an effective website require you to a) go it alone or b) pay out the big bucks. Choose the option that's right for you.
4) New Pages on the Site
When you signed up for the newsletter, you were promised an update on new pages to the site. Here they are!
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Traffic exploded on my children's books site in February. Since this newsletter is about online book marketing, let's talk about that...
I averaged over 900 unique visitors per day. (So far this month? Over 1000.) Google alone sent me over 22,000 visitors - all from FREE search.
Is it magic that the site's traffic is exploding? I wish! The SIZE of my website is exploding, and visitation reflects that.
Want to know more about the correlation between the size of a website and its traffic? Keep reading!
2) Why, on the Web, Size Matters
Did you know that the amount of your traffic is very closely related to the size (in pages and written content) of your website? That is, it is if you're counting on the search engines to bring you visitors.
Why is size key? Well, the sum total of your search engine traffic is a product of how often searchers click to you when a page on your site comes up in the search results.
If your site is only likely to appear in a search for Swedish vampire novels, don't expect many visitors. But if you rank for
- Swedish vampire novels
- European vampire novels
- vampire romance novels
- vampire hunter novels
- classic vampire novels
- vampire myths, and
- Nosefratu
...things are looking better!
But don't expect to rank for these search terms (keywords) unless you make a conscious, concerted, knowledge-based effort to do so. If you've never thought about what and how many keywords you're competing for...
Chances are you're not getting a lot of traffic.
(And don't expect to rank for a keyword unless you've written a dedicated webpage to compete specifically for that keyword. That's why website size matters!)
Think of the "universe" of possible keywords, from the general to the highly specific - from books to books about teenaged vampires living in Sweden. Your site's total traffic can be thought of as a function of
a) how many keywords you're competing for,
b) how highly you rank for those keywords, and
c) how often those terms are searched for.
An effective traffic-building strategy, therefore, is to identify popular keywords in your niche and attempt to compete for them.
How?
Well, books could be written on this subject, so I'm going to have to oversimplify. Let's start with a tool that can attach a numeric value to a keyword's popularity. Now, type in teenage vampire.
1900 people per month search the term. I want a piece of that! (My imaginary book has a particularly colorful character who just happens to be a teenage vampire.) Here's what I'm going to do...
I'm going to write a Keyword Focused Content Page about Teenage Vampires.
What's a Keyword Focused Content Page (KFCP)? It's a webpage consisting of at least a few hundred words on the subject of, in this case, Teenage Vampires.
Think of it as a loose creative writing assignment. Your teacher, Ms. Google, has given you the topic, but it's up to you, the writer, how to approach it. You could
- do a book report on teenage vampires in literature
- write a number of diary entries in the voice of your favorite teenage vampire. (Make sure she uses the phrase teenage vampire.)
- discuss similarities and differences between teenage vampires and regular teenagers
- discuss similarities and differences between teenage vampires and regular vampires!
Once you add this page to your site, you have a new source of traffic. Of course, the higher your page ranks, the more traffic that'll result, but...
The upper limit on additional traffic is something significantly less than an additional 1900 visitors per month. In other words, you can't generate more traffic from a keyword than there is interest in that keyword!
Let's say you end up ranking 8th for Teenage Vampire and, as a result, receive an extra 30 visitors per month.
That's great, but it hardly turned you from an internet also-ran into a web wonder. Then again, give yourself 99 similar writing assignments and you'd likely end up with another 100 visitors per day! Every day!
You can write 100 pages, right? After all, you wrote a book!
Keyword Focused Content Pages
Now, let's be clear: there's no point in writing a KFCP about teenage vampires if you've written a book on desert gardening. The average vampire enthusiast doesn't even grow their own garlic!
The keywords you choose should be specific to your book's niche.
Let's return to my imaginary book about a family of vampires. Only one of my characters is a teenager, but Thirsta is terrific. I can take the traffic I attract with my Teenage Vampire KFCP and direct it to another page on my site where I discuss Thirsta in detail. And it just so happens that there's a Buy button on that page!
Make sense?
Once I finish, it's time for me to find some other juicy keywords in my vampire niche and write KFCPs for them. Pretty soon my site is Vampire Central, and I've got lots of visitors to whom I can market my book.
Convinced yet that the size of a website matters?
Remember, I did say that I was going to oversimplify all this. To give your Keyword Focused Content Pages a chance at ranking #1 for a search you still need to learn more about
- keyword research
- meta data
- site structure, and
- establishing backlinks
...among other things. But the hardest, most time-consuming part of all of it is the writing...something you enjoy and are particularly well-qualified to do, right?
Writers rule on the web, because the web is mostly about words and that's what we do best. You can't take advantage of your skills, though, without the right tools.
Keep reading for a way to bring it all together - to create Keyword Focused Content Pages that bring in that traffic you've been craving!
3) Two New Ways to an Effective Website
Is your tiny website making use of your big talent? Think about writing a site that's built to GROW, a site that keeps gobbling up new keywords!
(Keywords that bring strangers who would otherwise never have heard about your book.)
I learned how to build websites in a way that worked for me. I bought a service called SiteBuildIt (SBI). They provided me a bunch of powerful tools, tools that came with the most wondrous set of instructions!
Instructions not just for getting my content up on the web, but for ensuring that it would get seen.
But hey: a lot of people HATE instructions. It's not how they like to learn.
The way I learned to build my SiteBuildIt sites was the only way back then. If you weren't a do-it-yourself type - weren't good with starting from scratch with only the help of a somewhat dry instruction manual - you were out of luck! Clearly, this wasn't the service for you.
Well, SiteBuildIt has completed an expansion of services. Now, there's an SBI approach to sitebuilding for everyone. Choose from:
1) The DIY approach
The do-it-yourself option that I used is still very much available. In fact, from now through March 20th there's a special on. If you know someone else who's also thinking about getting started on the web, you can get one SiteBuildIt site and one year of service for the regular price, and then get a 2nd for 2/3 off.
(Alternatively, if you have TWO web notions of your own, take advantage of the special entirely for yourself! You can even grab the discounted price now but put off the start of your second site for up to 9 months.)
2) The Do-It-For-Me approach
Maybe you already had a site built with the help of a "web designer." Chances are you've learned that most web designers build great looking sites...that nobody ever sees.
Well, guess what. When you have SiteBuildIt build a new site FOR you, it's built by folks who are experts in traffic...not bells and whistles and soothing color combos. You just pay SBI to do your site for you, and for much less than a top web designer would charge! It's called Sitesell Services.
That's right: less money, more traffic. You'll be wishing you HADN'T built that first site.
3) SBI's new Show-Me-How approach
It's called SBI eLearning. SiteBuildIt just made this option available to the public in the last couple weeks. It's a 12 week interactive online course (limited to 12 students per class). Each week of the course includes:
- An online video module. You're linked to an online video for each week's theory and instruction. You watch the video at your convenience. You take an interactive quiz and are graded (and corrected) instantly. You also have email access to your instructor during the week for questions you might have about the material.
- Live class session. You're connected to your instructor and your fellow students via internet and conference call for 90 minutes, once a week. The instructor reviews homework, answers questions, and goes into depth on the new material. He or she also assigns next week's homework.
- Homework. You've never done homework like this! How so? Because your finished homework becomes your new website! When your course has finished, your new site is up and running AND you've got the tools and the know-how to keep growing it.
The eLearning package includes a year of SBI, a US$299 value. The course itself goes for $499. But during this introductory period, SBI is taking $200 (in the form of an instant rebate) off the price of the educational element. That means that if you jump on this, you'll get a new site AND twelve weeks of education that'll last you a lifetime for a price of $598.00. (I'm afraid they're not saying when the introductory period is going to end, so the time to get in is now.)
Get the website you want AND the help you want! SBI eLearning.
SBI works
As I've mentioned before, I have two SBI sites. My wife has two. As I noted above, one of my sites is receiving 1000+ unique visitors per day. But here are some more persuasive figures...
- 62% of SBI sites found themselves in the top 3% most highly trafficked internet sites
- 53% made the top 2%
- 35% made the top 1%
Read the details on these stats.
How can over 1/3 of SBI sites be in the top 1%? Because of the kinds of things I talk about in this newsletter! Traffic does NOT just happen; it comes as a result of knowing how the internet works. Simply hanging out a shingle on the Web is the equivalent of handing out flyers in a darkened alley.
You're tucked away in an unseen place, and the people who DO stumble across you aren't exactly your best prospects. (Unless you're looking to get mugged!)
Consider SiteBuildIt - in any of the three forms described above - to put the true reach of the internet in your hands.
4) New Pages on the Site
When you signed up for this newsletter you were promised updates on new stories posted to The Shared Self Publishing Experience. Here they are!
Remember to read the comments. (Because when writers write back in response to my questions, sometimes that's where the best information is.) And please post your own comments as well!
On my children's books site:
Jamieson's Poetry
WRAPPING UP
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