Reviving a Successful Site in 12 Months

revisiting Brett's classic

[annej]

As usual I find myself a bit frustrated with all the messages about how the latest update is a disaster. It looks to me like Brett’s “26 Steps for a Successful Site in 12 Months” is all the more true now. I want to recommend it for all the newcomers who haven’t seen it before. Frankly I think there should be a link to it at the top of the “Google News” page.

It’s at [webmasterworld.com...]

Even if you have a commercial site the key is quality information. I’ll admit I don’t get a new article up every day as it takes me a week to research and write one but I do think you need a good number of quality pages for this to work.

[AthlonInside]

I really respect Brett as a he successfully build such an amazing forum! But for that article, I think Brett should have a 2004 version. :)

[Oaf357]

A 2004 version?

That would be nice but the article still stands as a superb guide to building a successful web site.

[annej]

Athlon, You may be right that things are different now. What would you change?

I wondered if keyword domains are back in. They seem to do well. Also is it necessary to submit to search engines anymore. Maybe there are some new factors unknown at the time of the article.

I do think the content, content, content with links to and from RELATED sites is still the best advise that can be given.

It's fun to see the homepage of my biggest site in there on a single keyword but in truth just a small fraction of visitors come in through that word. Most come to a multitude of different pages through more specific searches.

[willybfriendly]

Hey, that article has worked for me across multiple search engines. And, as the site reaches the point where it starts generating its own organic links, traffic begins to become SE independant, which is always a good thing :)

I'll grant, I play in a small niche.

WBF

[theitboy]

Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20%

Seems to me that the above equals "banished to nowhere" these days.

[Ledfish]

I would agree, most of it is probably still reliable and relevant, but it might need some tweaking to stay current.

Maybe Brett would like to revise it and hopefully he will, but I'm sure with all the traffic around here from the latest google update, he's probably so busy being a janitor, he doesn't have alot of time to be a professor.

[ThomasB]

I think the article is still one of the best, I'd even say the best, guide on the web for that topic. I'm sure that there are some changes, but I'm sure he could change it every other week due to some algo tweeks, developments on the web, ... but I'd call it: "Classic guide to success"!

[kevinpate]

> Seems to me that the above equals "banished
> to nowhere" these days

banished? definitely a different view than the view from my porch swing.

[ncw164x]

>>the best guide on the web for that topic
With out a doubt it is the best guide

If you use it as a giude to get started and then tweek it to suit your own site you will be on the right track, You can't say by following this guide that your site has not acheved anything extra because you are talking through your backside.

You can't expect this to work first time and do all the work for you, it just wont happen that way. You do have to keep making adjustments to your site, checking your log files to see what's working etc. the normal everyday work that a webmaster does

Being a webmaster is for life not just for Christmas

What you must understand is google have made some massive changes over the last 3 months and sites will go missing while other will appear, it's all part of the game which we play.

Like Kevin said "everything is rosy from where I am sitting"

ncw164x