The internet is filled with sites and they are good and bad. Some have been known for a long time and some still struggle to get the respect and fame they think they deserve.

Although not all your visitors are web design professional they still can put their finger on a good site and sense the ones that are not that ok. But how can you convince people your site deserves to be known and respected? How can you make them feel your site is better than other thousands they could find on the same subject?

Elegant design

You need a nice looking site. Don't overdo this either, but try to offer your site a unique and nice feeling. Branding is also important. Try to come up with a nice logo.

Create a nice layout, try to have a consistent colour theme and use nice fonts. Don't use templates unless they are unique and you have got the only copy. There's nothing worse for your "respected" site than a theme people have seen for 50 times before.

Avoid animated gifs, annoying backgrounds and music.

Good and interesting content

Don't just throw links and downloads. Nowadays people need more, not to mention the search engines would love your site more if you offer them some content. Organize the content logically and update it frequently.

Good way to advertise

We all need to live and some try to do this from the site they run. It's ok to have an ad campaign or two. Just don't over do it. Don't fill your pages with many banners and advertising links. They would make people lose respect for you not to mention ruin the entire layout.

A good behaviour online

Don't think people cannot trace you just because you are "anonymous" online. wrong. if someone wants to trace you all the way to your lair, there's nothing you can do against it. But you can use this in order to get known, in a positive manner.

Post in forums and respect. People will come to know you eventually from seeing your good posts and nice behaviour. When they'll see your site this could mean more visitors and perhaps some clients that are almost convinced you really mean business.

Respect towards your visitors

Don't treat your visitors bad, offer them a pleasant experience and make them love the place. Offer them a feed-back form and respond as fast as possible to any questions they might ask. Word of mouth is a serious promotion. Use it in your behalf.

Good organization

Don't take prisoners, let people know what's on your site and how they can reach the information they are looking for. A sitemap is a good thing to add to your site if you've got more pages. It's also a good trick for the search engines optimization. Have a good navigation system and don't make people have to guess what's going on in your little place online.

About information and contact page

For a business and even a personal page, a good about and contact page can do wonders. When people see a nice site they tend to want to know something more about the person running it or the business presenting it. And a contact page is a must on every site. For a business offer phone numbers and addresses, for a personal page at least an email address.

Updates

Frequent updates make search engines love you, not to mention your visitors. If you cannot update the information on a daily basis, try at least a monthly update.

Jonathan Yates
http://www.internetworldchat.co.uk
Internet World Chat is a discussion forum for webmasters to get tips or advice.