I like making websites. I really do. Creating content is a royal pain in the ass, but I like taking a WordPress theme, tweaking it, and using it to create a website that is actually somewhat useful and looks nice at the same time.

I noticed that one of my sites had a huge spike in traffic this morning, so I checked it out. Turns out a certain blogger had referenced my site and it was published on Yahoo! Finance. Pretty sweet. I then went and spent some time taking a close look at that site, pondering why it has done so much better than similar sites of mine in the same general niche. Especially since it is so clearly an affiliate site.

The main reason, I have deduced, is that it actually provides some goddamn value to the visitor. Yes, it took me like 3 days to build the whole thing and have all of the proper navigation in place (and I still add to it once a month or so). And come to think of it, I spent more time on that aspect of that particular site than I ever do on the rest of them that only earn a fraction of what this particular one earns. This is also reflected in the 25% average bounce rate (like 20% for its primary keyword).

The thing is, I can SEO shitty substance-free sites until I’m blue in the face, and I can profit from them to some degree, but ultimately they are going to hit a glass ceiling. Those sites are never going to be shared via email or referenced on prominent, authority websites. In the long-term, I’m better off having 10 of the sites like my precious little golden child site than 100 decent ones with limited potential.

I would say the three main things you need to keep in mind when building a new site are the following:

Design
Obviously. People (including you and I) often bounce right away if a site looks amateur. If you can’t make it look right, you might as well pay someone else to make it look right.

Navigation
They say your visitors should always have multiple routes in which they can get to your inner pages. I’ve found that big shiny logos really help, for instance, if you’re doing some sort of e-commerce site with products from different brands. Little text links in the sidebar won’t always cut it. Drop down menus are always good. A prominent SEARCH feature that WORKS is good. Don’t be afraid to create sub-directories and really refine what your visitor is looking for (if the niche permits it). Once people are a few clicks in, they are already invested in your site, and if you show them exactly what they’re looking for (instead of general results), conversion rates obviously go up.

Resources
Even if they don’t help sell anything or push traffic through your affiliate links, add some helpful shit. Whether it be how-to guides related to your niche, FAQ, or even just a collection of helpful related videos embedded from YouTube, it gives your site credibility that can pay off in the long-term. It also keeps people clicking around. Don’t even monetize these pages. Just put them there. You might also want to find a way to link to them from Wikipedia. These are the pages that are most likely to gain backlinks naturally.

A while back I talked about a super effective, white-hat method of gaining powerful backlinks. In a nutshell, it’s a crafty approach to getting other webmasters to link to your site. Obviously, the effectiveness of this method (or any link begging) is going to be drastically improved if your site actually looks like its contributing to the internet and isn’t just a spammy, dime-a-dozen, junk site.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got some pretty junky sites in my portfolio. I think I might lose my off-white card if I didn’t. All I’m saying here is that the extra work it takes to build something useful can pay off huge in the long-term, and long-term is what the SEO game is all about, as far as I’m concerned.

Maybe my next post won’t be so squeaky clean. I’d hate to have you guys think I went soft. I’ll cook something up.