When it comes to building websites you need to understand what you fundamentally wish to achieve. This should be front and center. This way you stay focused on your overall goal which will help you stay on track when it comes to research.

One thing a lot of people fail to remember when building a site is that you will need to effectively communicate with people. Sure you will be doing a lot of keyword research but behind those keywords are people who need something and you need to communicate with them.

The mechanics of the site will be based upon the keywords you choose. This will determine the navigation and overall theme of your site. Getting this right is really important. This will also help you to achieve good rankings on the search engines.

For effective keyword research you will need to visit multiple sites to determine how best you can position your new site. Everyone will tell you that you need low competition keywords with high volume searches - while this is sound advice it can be tuff to achieve but that does not mean that you should not do it.

Where I change the game a little is by starting with the article directories and looking for keywords with articles that achieve high number of page views, this way I know I can write an article and get immediate quality traffic without having to wait for the search engines.

This can bring you advertising revenue and sales. When it comes to building the site itself there are lots of site building software out there. The one I had the most success with starting out helped me to get into the search engines and took care of hosting and good link development along with a solid site structure.

To learn how you can put this work for you select any of the following links.

No matter what site you build it will never be able to make money unless it gets traffic. You ask anyone online who is either new or intermediate what their biggest challenge is. The majority would say that getting traffic to their site is their number one priority.

So when building a site you will naturally want to build it in a way that will help this to happen. In order to do this you need to research extensively what way you will be able to get in front of people searching for products or information relative to your sites theme. You will need to research markets somewhat relative to your interests. For example you may be interested in travel.

Some guru's say you should not necessarily build a site around something you are interested in - instead you should build a site around a subject that will make you money. While this is understandable many people would be challenged to keep up the motivation doing something they do not like when they are starting out - because at this point there will be very little if any money coming in.

What you can do is pick a subject of general interest and then find niches within that which are profitable. This way you have the best of both worlds helping you to stay motivated and make money at the same time.

So your primary goal is to build a site that can compete with others and make you money. Develop the site in a way that the search engines will be able to understand and your visitors will enjoy. This way you will build relationships and as a result make money. To learn more on how to put all this together select any of the following links.

Not every site needs a site map, they can certainly be a good idea. Site maps provide a dual purpose: They provide search engine spiders easy access to all of your site pages and they provide site visitors easy access to all of your site pages. The difference is that search engines and visitors access your site map differently and therefore there are different methods that need to be applied to creating site map(s) that are friendly for both engines and search spiders.

Small sites typically don't need a site map so long as all pages are linked in the main navigation. Once you get into main and sub-navigation menu's then site maps are helpful in allowing search engines and visitors to quickly find anything they are looking for within just a couple of clicks. A single site map can be used for both purposes or multiple site maps can be created. Here we'll address creating site maps for spiders and humans separately.

Site Map For Spiders

.xml file

An .xml document should be added to your site's root directory containing links to all site pages. This .xml file should then be referenced should be compiled and placed into a proper .xml document which should be uploaded into the root directory.

Robots.txt file

With your .xml site map file in place you must then make it accessible to search spiders. Reference the site map in your robots.txt file by adding a line for sitemap: URL (example: sitemap: http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/sitemap.xml)

Keep current

Be sure that your .xml file is updated and uploaded frequently, or at least as often as pages are added or removed from your site. Large sites should implement an automated site map update monthly or even weekly or daily.

Site Map For Visitors

Navigation links

A site map designed for human visitors is just like any other website page. Link to the site map page should be included in the primary navigation or the site's global footer. Visitors should be able to find this link without too much searching.

Additional page links

Site map should also be linked from various pages within the site such as Help pages and your custom 404-redirect page. This helps point visitors to the site map as a quick and easy means to find what they need.

Overview

It's helpful to provide a short overview paragraph at the top of your site map page. This can be a nice introduction should someone land on this page directly from a search engine or elsewhere.

Heading and layout

The layout of the site map should present a clear visual hierarchal structure or your website. Both headings and sub-headings should be used above properly grouped links.

Text links & descriptions

Site map should primarily use textual links and page should not be cluttered with images or other distractions. It is also a good idea to provide an additional short description (provided there is room) for each link that allows the visitor to better understand where each link will take them.

Keep current

Be sure that your site map is updated and uploaded frequently, or at least as often as pages are added or removed from your site.

As I said above, not every site needs a site map. But those that do should be sure that the site map(s) they create are actually benefiting them. And the best way to do that is to make sure your site maps provide maximum usability for visitors and search engine spiders.