Good Afternoon! It’s Monday…are you ready for a challenge?
We all have our favorite websites, news portals, industry blogs and guilty pleasure sites that we visit on a daily basis. Visiting our favorite sites has become just as ritualized as preparing our morning coffee. It goes something like: Get to work, turn on computer, check email, check news, check sports, check guilty pleasure, start working. Isn’t that how it goes? (Or if you are like me…you go straight to work..no web surfing here…Right Tom? Wink Wink)
Inspired by this post over at SEOMoz, I developed a list of “Top Sites I Can’t Live Without”.
1. Google/ Gmail/IGoogle
2. Yahoo
3. Celebrity Starbucks
4. MySpace
5. Craigslist
The list consists of two search portals, a celebrity gossip blog, social networking site, and an online classifieds site. While it gives you an intimate look into my personality profile, (be nice…I’m new here), it is also interesting to note the similarities between the websites and the key contributing elements which makes them addicting “a must see”. These five sites, while diverse in content, appear to share these common elements:
1. Up-to-date and ever-changing content. At a feverish pace, these websites offer updated content, news and networking opportunities.
2. Opportunity for discussion and interaction
3. Networking tools
4. Resource for information of interest
5. Ability to view what others are interested in
The challenge I pose to you, as a website owner, is to ask yourself, “Does my website have what it takes to make it into somebody’s Top 5?”. (Your spouse, mom and dog are excluded..sorry!) If you are unsure or think the answer might be no, it may be time to rejuvenate your website.
Revitalizing your website may be as easy as updating the content, adding a few pages or incorporating a business blog. These simple steps can make a huge difference in the way a user views your site AND the way search engines crawl the site. A more enjoyable user experience and more frequent search engine crawling can lead to more traffic..and the more traffic you have, the closer you are to becoming a site that somebody can’t live without.