How large should your writer’s Web site be?

I’m often asked how large a writer’s Web site should be.

Essentially, it depends on your FOCUS for a particular site. I have many sites for writers, some small and others large. For example, my writing blog is quite large; I started it several years ago, and it has a large focus, on the world of writing. On the other hand, other sites, like my Your EveryDay Write site, are small. The Your EveryDay Write site is just for people who want ongoing writing prompts sent out to them.

If you’re just starting out, and don’t have a site, build that site out. It should be your “name” site, that is, a site with your own name as the domain name. Since it’s your “name” site, you can make the site as large or as small as you please. Viz, my angelabooth.com site.

All sites are built with the search engines and traffic in mind.

As How ‘Mini-Funnel’ Websites Can Help You Increase Traffic, Generate Leads and Build Exposure reports:

“Search engines are an excellent source of high quality web traffic. They don’t send visitors who ’stumble upon’ your website or accidently clicked on an ad banner. Instead, they send you interested visitors who type in a query while fully expecting to find what they need. They are engaged right from the start and ready to buy, browse or read.”

So think about who a site is for. Your name site gets you known online – it’s a catchall. The benefit of creating this site is that it can lead people to other sites you create for specific purposes.

For example, let’s say that you’ve written an ebook for people who want to lose weight. You could of course add a page to your name site describing your weight loss ebook with its PayPal button so that people could buy it.

However, this page would tend to get lost among your other site pages, and it would be quite difficult to send “weight loss” traffic to a site which is a writer’s site. In a case like this, it’s much better to create a site just for the ebook. The traffic you get to that site will be much more targeted, and you’ll get more traffic, because the site is narrowly focused.

For example, I created a new site for my Web copywriting ebook – this site is narrowly targeted, to people who want to learn how to write copy for their small business.

So think about FOCUS, rather than how small or large a site should be.

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