1. Do Not Make A Website You Have No Interest In
If you want to make a website and earn an extra income or a full-time income you are essentially starting a business. So it is vital that you have an interest in whatever niche you decide to focus on.
If you lack knowledge or desire you are setting yourself up for major disappointment. Why? Because you are less likely to manage the site content and promotion. Therefore you are more likely to let the site sit there and far less likely to succeed.
2. Not Updating Frequently Or Not Updating At All
I cannot stress enough the importance of avoiding this mistake. I can absolutely tell you from personal experience that if you continuously let your site sit and let days or months go by without an update your visitors will notice and they will move on to a site that offers consistently fresh content.
3. Not Optimizing For Search Engines
As you build your site it's important to think about how potential visitors will find your site in the search engines. Studying search engine optimization before you put your site together is vital because without it people will be less likely to find your site in the search engines.
You've likely heard location is important when starting a business offline. The same can be said for optimizing a website for search engines. Just as if you were opening a store in the heart of town you want to be where the action is so new customers can find you. In the online world you want to be listed well in the search engines so visitors can find you.
4. Not Optimizing Each Page For Search Engines
This is a common mistake that I can tell you I've been guilty of in the past. If you have several pages on your site and each offers different content or information it's important that each page has a unique title, description and keywords.
If you have 5 pages for instance, and all have unique content you want to let the search engine know what each page is about so it can crawl and index your pages accordingly. Otherwise the search engines will think the page are duplicate content and the pages will not be indexed and you will miss out on potential search traffic.
5. Not Promoting Your Site
Often people are under the impression that all you need to do is put a site online and the traffic will start pouring in. This simply isn't true.
Site promotion is essential. There are many ways to promote a site through link exchanges, search engine optimization and directory submissions to name a few.
