Are you building a website and need to know what makes a great website? There are so many websites out there, what will it be that makes yours a standout one? In this segment of an interview between Dale Beaumont and Mike Rhodes find out the hallmarks of a great website.
Two days after starting his first business, Mike experienced a minor setback when his internet cafe was flooded. After the water had gone, he went on to build a popular business, which he sold in 2001 and then moved to Sydney, Australia. Mike now spends his time speaking, consulting and mentoring with businesses on the subjects of online marketing and building websites that work.
What do you believe are the hallmarks of a great website?
There are three things that any website needs – from an SEO point of view and, even more importantly, for your readers:
- Great content – people search the web looking for answers and solutions. That could be a deep insight into a topic; a great product, service or experience; or free resources like mind maps or how-to videos. So, having great content is important for two reasons: to quickly prove to a new visitor that you have the information they need to answer their questions or solve their problems; and to convince those visitors to come back time and time again.
- Great design – I strongly believe that a website must do its job and achieve whatever goals you set. That doesn’t mean it has to be ‘pretty’. It means that the site has to be designed to be highly usable and to work. If a visitor can’t get to all the great content, if they can’t navigate easily around your site or buy your products, then it won’t matter how good your information is or how your site looks. It’s an extension of being found – visitors have found your website, now they need to be able to find the answers to their questions.
- Plenty of links – Google and the other search engines believe that if you’re linking to other relevant information, then that must be of service to your visitors and so your rankings in the search engines improves. Your readers like those links because they don’t use the web in a linear fashion, they hop from one place to the next following the conversation across multiple sites. And, like everything in life, you’ll reap what you sow – link to other sites and you’ll start getting links back to yours, thereby building traffic and gaining more readers – it’s called link love!
For more of this interview and what makes a great website check out “Secrets of Internet Entrepreneurs Exposed!“
