I’ve been doing this websites thing for almost 1 year. So what kind of advice do I have for people in the same boat as me?
I know everyone says this, but I will try to elaborate a little on what it actually means (to me at least).
Find a niche! Now, that doesn’t JUST mean make a website that doesn’t have much competition and you’ll have success. Even niches have a lot of competition, because everyone has the same idea as you!
The most important thing is to understand your audience and even more important is to find them where most (or few) other people are looking. For example, everyone thinks that Google is the only search engine. Of course, if you think this, that is just ignorant (probably not your fault, this is what most people think). Google is extremely popular. But this is a bad thing, because people know this and that means you are going to have a great amount of competition.
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Boost Your Rank, My Progress, Personal
bing, know your audience, niche, search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, search engines, seo, yahoo
The big secret to running successful websites is simple – keep up with the trends. You may think that Facebook and Twitter are stupid (I agree), but if you embrace the social networking phenomenon, it can be a very very powerful marketing tool.
Twitter is easy!
If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically the status update thing from Facebook, in a standalone form. The great thing about Twitter is you don’t need to write an essay. 140 characters and you are done. So basically, you write what you are currently doing / looking at and maybe a link (which gets automatically tinyurled).
Like any website promotion like this, make sure you keep your profile / page updated. At least once a week, make an effort. Check out a few other people’s pages, make a few comments, become part of the community.
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Boost Your Rank
search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, seo
If you’ve used WebsiteGrader, you might’ve noticed the section mentioning that you need to redirect www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com to the same location. I’ve done my research on the effects of not doing this, but there are a lot of conflicting opinions. The general though is that your search engine score might be split between the two “seperate” sub-domains.
There is a chance that other problems can be caused also. SSL certificates are for one sub-domain only (with or without the www.), so your certificate might show the user an error if they use the other.
Some search engines may realize they are the same website, others may not, but why risk lowering your score, when it’ll take you less than 5 minutes to fix this problem?!
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Boost Your Rank, The Basics
.htaccess rewrite, loose www, redirect, redirection, remove www, search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, seo
All the way back in my first article, Where to Start, I talked about how registering a domain name containing your website’s keywords is important. Well having the keywords in the complete URL to the page is also helpful.
The URL of the page you’re on now for example: http://www.cashsblog.com/2009/01/flat-links/. It contains to year, month, then title of the article. This can give search engines a better idea of what the page is about. Have you ever seen URLs like http://www.cashsblog.com?read_article.php?year=2009&month=01&key=120&title=flat-links and thought “What the hell does that mean?”
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Boost Your Rank
domain tools, flat links, redirection, search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, search engines, seo, SEO Tools
Want to know what your website’s worth? Whether it’s to sell your website, or just for fun, Website Outlook will give you a good idea.
Just like DomainTools’ SEO Score and Website Grader’s Score, Website Outlook’s score (value) is calculated using their own made up algorithm. That means, it is just an indication! It derives the value, based on a number of factors, including Alexa Rank, Google PageRank and number of backlinks.
Check it out here: Website Outlook. Just type you URL (www.whatever.com) and click Submit.
Note: Subdomains (like subdomain.whatever.com)
I mostly use it for fun. It makes me feel good when I see the “value” of my websites go up 
Check Your Rank, SEO Tools, Website Tools
alexa rank, backlinks, google pagerank, search engine optimization, seo, website grader, website outlook, website value
Google Analytics is the tool I use. I must admit, I haven’t tried anything else. But that’s because Google Analytics already gives me more than enough information and I live by the idea that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
All you do is put some HTML/JavaScript code down the bottom of each page you want to be tracked and within a few minutes, Google starts tracking your life *cough* I mean, your website.
It’s completely free and you’re not forced to put a link back to Google on your site. I suspect they use the information collected for much more than we know. But oh well, Google’s going to take over the world anyway it’s inevitable. We should all just accept it! 
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Website Tools
check hits, check visitors, google analytics, search engine optimization, seo