When you are looking to create a website, it is not the best idea to start with a vague notion of what you have in mind for the site. The best websites and certainly the most successful (from social websites such as Facebook, even down to small fan tribute sites) all share certain characteristics and an intelligent design.

Understanding exactly what you want before you even start putting together your website is the foundation stone upon which to build any successful site and once you have that in place, it’s merely a case of following these five steps to popularise your site online.

It is important to understand that these five steps are not a promise of overnight success, but merely the best way to go about building your site in the hope of long-term success.

1. Is your site going to be informational or promotional?

Think carefully about what the intended purpose of your site is. If you are staring at the opening section of a website builder, wondering what to do next, then stop; take a step back and get back to planning your site.

One of the first things to decide is if your site is going to be a tribute site (say for a pop star of football team) and will only provide information. Most people, however, tend to build sites that are promotional in nature, in the hope of driving traffic and custom to their site.

2. To be successful your site needs traffic

The fact of the matter is, you could have the most technologically brilliant, innovative and outstanding site on the Internet, but without traffic, it is not going to reach the people who are interested in what you have to say or offer.

For those seeking to build a website, two key strategies are outlined below, but in conjunction with these, you need to popularise your site with your own legwork. In the early stages of building a site, this means putting in many hours promoting you and your site in your niche area and on similarly-themed pages and sites away from your own website.

3. Search engine optimisation (SEO): What it is, how it works and how it applies to your site!

SEO is the quickest and most effective way of generating traffic from search engines. Finding out the key phrases and words that your target readers are searching for is the most efficient way to begin to popularise your site.

This is achieved either from the production of targeted articles on your site, or hosted on other popular sites where they can gain attention and drive traffic to your site (known as affiliates). Understanding the basics of SEO can have an influence how often customers view a site and how much traffic is directed to your site from search engines.

4. Regularly updated content is vital

Once you have a regular set of viewers of your website, the crucial thing is keeping them and adding to them. The key to that is having regularly updated content on your site. Nothing puts a visitor off than visiting a site that is not update regularly.

Keeping your site and your landing page fresh and updated with new, relevant and informative articles will not only attract new viewers but keep your regular viewers coming back for more.

5. Do you want your site to earn money for you?

Many sites are now monetised, meaning that they can earn money from hosting adverts from selected companies on their websites. Others link to products or services the host themselves is selling.

It is relatively easy to join up with an advertising company, such as Google Adwords, and create website advertisements to be hosted on other sites to popularise your site, or to host adverts on your own site to bring in extra revenue.

How much that revenue will be and how expensive an Internet advertising campaign for your site will be, depends very much on how popular it is. That said; the general rule of thumb is that the more popular a site is, the more money it can make for the owner.

By having an understanding of these five basic criteria when looking to make a website, the person designing the site can gain a far better understanding of not only how their site should look and work, but how the site can serve the needs of potential users in the future.

Careful planning at the design stage is the best way to ensure that your website has a long, popular and productive digital presence on the World Wide Web.