How to Build a Website That Sells

It may sound obvious, but the most important thing you can do to ensure the success of your Internet business is to have a website that works and by saying “works”, we mean more than function. It has to do a good job of making sure your prospective customers can find you and that starts with keyword research.

Keywords are the words that people type into a search engine (e.g Google or Bing) to find what they want. If you want a purple pen, you don’t type in “pen” because that will get you lots of listings that don’t necessarily contain a purple pen. You would logically type in “purple pen”, and the search results you would get are sites that contain these words in their content.

Start your keyword research by listing every word or phrase you can think of that customers might use to find what you are selling. To find the optimal phrases for that search – words that you want to be sure appear often in your web content – use research tools like Google Adwords or WordTracker to compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your website.

In doing your research, you should also look for niche keywords or markets that others haven’t found yet. These are keywords that are popular search terms with little competition – Google Adwords and Wordtracker both have measurements for keyword effectiveness that you can scrutinize to find these hidden gems. They are few and far between, so if you find one, use it!!

Once you have a list of keywords, you need to design your site based on your research. For example, if you are selling art supplies, then be sure your site is laid out by category – paints, canvasses, pencils, pens – and even subcategories (remember that purple pen!) to make your products easy to find via search. Add your keywords and phrases to your on page content, and when trying to build links use anchor text with these keywords.