In the digital world of today, if you do not have a website you do not exist. It is that simple! Having a website to promote yourself and your work is as essential as having a business card and email. You know this, but websites, computers and technology are both technically challenging and cloaked in mystery. Some of the mystery is because there is a lot to understand and there are many opinions about what is best. But some of the mystery is because the high priests of web technology do not take the time to explain in plain English what you should know. Here I will reveal ten secrets to having a great website.

1. Buy your domain name now
An author recently called to discuss our website services and during the conversation she asked if her name was available as a domain. I ran a quick check and found the name had been registered just a few months earlier. If that was not disappointing enough, I found that someone had just put up a one page website in memory of their deceased mother. So here was an author with a book ready to launch whose name was a website saying she had died! With a domain name costing less than $20 per year, you should buy “yourname.com” today and hold on to it forever. And while you are at it, go ahead and buy your “booktitle.com” too. If you change the title later, you can let the registration expire – think of it as inexpensive insurance.

If you find your name is not available, you can try variations such as adding an initial or using just your initials. By registering your name now you will be able to coordinate your domain name with your professional name. It is much easier for people to find you if the name on your book, article or other writing matches your domain name.

2. Stick to the “.com” web address
The “dot whatever” (e.g. .com, .net, .org) part of a domain name is referred to as the Top-Level Domain, or TLD. Most people are aware there are other TLDs besides “.com” but do not confuse them by using anything else (unless you are a non-profit organization and then you should choose .org). It is ok to buy other generic TLDs to match your .com if you want to prevent someone from using them. To protect your name, I recommend buying the .net and .org as these are the mostly widely known. You may also consider buying the .biz, .info, .name and .us. But since there are more than twelve generic TLDs and more than 250 country and other TLDs, you should not try to buy them all.

3. Launch your website a minimum of 3-6 months before you think you need it
You should launch your website as soon as you consider yourself a professional writer, even if you are not published. Two reasons are that it helps project your professionalism and it provides a way for people to find and contact you.

At a minimum, you should launch your website three to six months ahead of when you think you need one. Why? It will take that long to show up in all the search engines, especially Google. Plus it takes times to build links, see “Developing inbound links” below.

4. Keep it professional
Your website should reflect the professional writer that you are. That means good design, crisp copy, focused content. If you are also a graphic artist you may want to create the design yourself. If not, have the design created by a professional, whether with a custom designed site or a professionally designed template. A template is a website design developed independently from your site and it may be used by other websites. It is ok to use a professionally designed template as this should save you a lot of money. However, the templates included with some software may be too easily recognized and are best avoided.

Resist the urge to include cute, frilly, extraneous content on your site. Your kids may be talented, your pets adorable and your vacation fun, but do these have anything to do with your writing? If not, leave it out.

Spinning and flashing graphics look cheap. Having music play automatically is annoying and potentially embarrassing for someone viewing your site from work. Heavy graphics will make the page slow to load for those on slower connections. Do not go with a “free” site that does not use your own domain name or that put ads on your page. These types of sites say you are cheap and unprofessional. Think about the sites that you do business with – what level of professionalism do you look for and expect? You are a business too! Have your site support your platform as a professional writer.

5. Use it to sell your book.
Surprisingly, some author sites overlook the basic purpose of selling books. There are several ways to sell your book online, make sure your website does at least one of these.

Tell them to contact you. The simplest way to sell is to tell someone to contact you to buy your book. Whether by email, phone, or mail, provide visitors the information they need to get in touch with you to buy your book.

The most common way to sell your book online is to direct buyers to another website. That is, provide a link visitors can click to take them to a site where your book is sold. This may be your publisher or one of the online booksellers (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Booksense.com or an independent). If possible, link to the specific page so your book will appear rather than having a buyer search for you at the site. These sellers handle the sale and fulfillment (shipping) of the order.

If you are handling fulfillment yourself, you have a couple of choices.

Setup up a PayPal account and put a link on your website to your PayPal page. PayPal is easy to setup and use, but suffers from an image problem because of its heritage as an auction site payment system and some quirks regarding accepting credit cards.

Use a shopping cart. Generally, a shopping cart and the related merchant account for accepting credit cards are too much trouble and expense for a single author site. However, some website systems provide a shopping cart you can use for a reasonable fee.

6. Make your site search engine friendly
The subject of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often obscure and mysterious. One reason is that the search engines do not disclose exactly how they work. So there is a lot of guessing and trial and error. A lot of good information can be found at the search engine’s website, but here will I cover some of the basics.

First, have a clear hierarchy and make sure every page is reachable from at least one static link. Second, use text rather than images to display important information such as names and titles. Third, give your pages a clear and meaningful title. Finally, make use of meta tags such as key words, alt, and descriptions (meta tags are invisible to a visitor but used by some search engine robots).

If you are having your website custom built, your developer should know these things and will incorporate them into your site. If you are using one of the easy-to-use build your own website systems, you should find out how their system handles these suggestions.

Do not try any tricks on your site to deceive the search engine robots, these can get your site banned. Tricks such as hidden text and links, sneaky redirects, irrelevant words or duplicate content are considered deceptive or manipulative behavior.

Don’t participate in link schemes that promise to link many sites to yours. This technique is considered spam by search engines and could result in a lower ranking for your site.

7. Submit your site to only 3 search engines, if at all
Three search engines have nearly 80% of the U.S. search market. Google has almost 50%, followed by Yahoo and MSN. Plus many of the other search engines get their content from these three. So if you choose to submit your site, do not worry about the others. The exception is if there is a particular specialty search engine that your target audience uses. If you know your audience expects you to be listed on a particular search engine, be sure to submit your name to that site.

Google says it is not necessary to submit your site because their automated robots crawl the web following links and finding sites for inclusion. This is true for the other search engines too. That is why having links to your site is important.

To go a step further, you can submit your site to The Open Directory Project at dmoz.org. This is a human-edited directory of the web. A directory differs from a search engine in that a directory uses humans to classify a site. A search engine collects content and displays the results based on the words you use in the search. Yahoo.com has the best known directory and it was the basis for their early success. However, you must pay for inclusion in their directory. Do not confuse Yahoo’s directory with their search engine. They now have both, having added the search engine as others such as Google became popular.

It is worth mentioning that dmoz is a volunteer project and it does not accept all sites that are submitted. When you submit it is up to you to find the category that best fits your site.

To submit your site, use the links below or go to the search engine or directory website and search for a link to submit your site. There is no charge for submitting your site.

Google
Yahoo
MSN
dmoz

8. Develop inbound links
These are links from other websites to your website and another reason you should launch your site well ahead of when you think you will need it. You will need that lead time to get other websites to link to your site.

Why get other sites to link to yours? Google pioneered the idea that the more links you have coming in and the higher ranked the site that provides the link, the more valuable your site is ranked. This is the “linking economy” – the value of your site is determined by how many inbound links you have plus how many people find and click on your site from a search engine.

So how do you develop links? There are several ways. One is to provide your website address to anyone who interviews you or reviews your work and to include it with every email, letter, book, article or other writing. Another is to identify websites that your audience visits and contact them. But before you contact them you should visit the site and find out all you can about them and why they would want to link to you. In some cases you may be able to entice them by offering a link from your site to theirs. But unless you have an established readership and people visiting your site this may be more a matter of courtesy than real value.

9. Track your websites performance
There are several ways to keep track of what your website is doing. The simplest method is a counter. You have seen these at the bottom of some web pages. In my opinion, the problem with a counter is that it is ugly, unprofessional, very simplistic and rather dumb. Simplistic because it only reports visits to one page and dumb because you can hit the refresh button on your browser and watch the count go up.

A step up from a counter is a tracker service. With this service you put a tag on your webpage and the information is collected for you. Generally the free services require their icon appear on your site and typically for a fee it can be hidden.

The most complete and powerful way to track performance is to analyze your website logs. All web servers are capable of logging activity on a website. Some hosting services provide access to an online log analyzer which you can view with a browser. For deeper analysis you can get the logs and purchase an analysis program and do it yourself. Generally, an online analyzer from your hosting company will give you more than you need. Ask about tracking your website performance when you consider a hosting company.

10. Keep your site up-to-date
Nothing shouts unprofessional like a stale, neglected website. Not that you have to update your site every day, but it needs to be current and correct. If you are having a site developed, ask about being able to do the updates yourself. One of the overlooked costs of a website is the ongoing cost of updates. Simple updates like changing copy, adding a clip and adding new events to your calendar are tasks you should be able to do easily and quickly. Search engine robots like fresh content and will visit more often if you are making changes.

Summary
Take my advice and get started today on assuring the success of your website. If you follow through on these ten secrets, you will be well on your way.

Marshall Turner is the President of Turner Technology, Inc. and creator of www.WebforAuthors.com. WebforAuthors.com provides authors and writers an easy-to use system to create and update their own websites. He can be contacted through the WebforAuthors.com or at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .