When you first begin to design a website, you have an idea of what it’s for and why you’re building it. You want to share you hobby, interest or passion with the world; you want to publicize your business and attract customers; you want the world to hear your opinions. What ever the reason for building a website, you probably want it to look good. But if you are building a website that will make you money, this may not be such a good idea. This may be counter intuitive but the worse the site the – more money you could make.

I’ve built a many web sites for all kinds of reasons – mostly business related – and one of the most profitable – was also the worst – by a long way. It took me about 15 minutes to build cost me about $20 and made me about $100. OK it didn’t make me rich exactly but that’s $320 an hour which is nice work if you can get it. I wouldn’t normally give away something as potentially profitable as this but to be honest, I don’t think this is easily repeatable. It was lucky but it was also spammy and not something I’d choose to repeat – but it does illustrate an important point – Bad can be Good.

I recieved a viral text message. Manchester United (an English Soccer team loved by many – hated by more) had just lost an important match. It was the final in The Champions League in Europe. The text message read: “Man United shirts going cheap. Printed with Champions league winners 2009. Visit www.overconfidentbastards.com “. I’m not here to say the joke is funny – just to say that this joke was landing on hundreds – or even thousands of mobile devices in the days and weeks that followed this defeat, not to mention the number of times the jokes was being regurgitated in online soccer forums, and I took advantage of it.

I registered the domain, put up a simple picture of the defeated team, embedded a bit of relevant content in the html and surrounded the picture with Google ads. Hey Presto, hundreds of hits per day with a click through rate I’ve yet to match. Why? Because visitors to the site found nothing of interest and left via one of the ads. Each click 10 cents. Thank you very much.

The SEO Lesson

You may take great pride in your site but do you want visitors to read all of your carefully crafted words? It’s OK if you do but you might want them to do something too? Do you want them to click on an advert? Do you want them to fill out a form and give you some information or join your group? Perhaps you want them to buy something? Establishing what you want visitors to do is the first and most important step of building a web site so that you can design it with that action in mind.

If you are building a site to make money through pay per click advertising, an attractive site could be too interesting and visitors won’t click ads. They’ll be enjoying themselves too much and will stay where they are. Get them to your less engaging site and they’ll immediately see something more appropriate for them in an ad.

Before you do anything decide what you want out of your web site. Is it to make money, either selling your own product or someone else’s?; Is it to spread the word about your music, your politics or beliefs? Is it to recruit followers or simply show off? Think carefully about the purpose of your site and in particular how you would like visitors to behave. Once you know this, you’ll know how to optimize your site for the purpose it is intended.

The next Fundamentals of SEO Lesson is Lesson 2: Relevance