Some additional tips about domains:
Make your domain name as catchy and short as possible without looking like gibberish.
com, net, org, and, me or a country suffix is best. The “vanity” ones are nice, but at least try to get the .com of something first.
Your site should be accessible and easy to navigate. People should be able to see a way to contact you and how to pay you without hunting more than one click. The more clicks it takes to find something, and the further down it is on the page, the less likely anyone will see it. You should also have options for changing the font sizes and sound if you can manage it. Aside of those with disabilities, sometimes people are busy, tired, or just prefer to listen.
Your site should not be noisy. Your site should be silent unless or until visitors click on a play button. Even then the default volume should be on the lower end.
Your site should show your humanity. Have photos of yourself doing the work, but also in other contexts. Use your discretion about how human you want to appear, but it should show some of your soul.
You site should add value to the internet and your niche. Yes, you should be paid for your labor, but part of advertising on the internet is to offer something special that folks get just for browsing. You will notice that all of my sites have free something. Visitors will either learn something new or gain something they can’t get anywhere else. Free samples get “asses into the seats”. It builds trust that lets them know that you’re the person they want to pay when they need a professional.
Share your site content on social media instead of using social media as your site. You’ll understand one reason why (aside of readability) next.
2. Be Everywhere and Ready to Pull Out Of Anywhere
Don’t post more than a paragraph of content on any social media, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This is where most people today mess up. If their social page gets shut down or they have to move because the “platform” gains a bad reputation or gets overcrowded with junk, they are dreading the fact they have to move all their content. Some platforms rely on this massive inconvenience to keep members despite shady or unfair policy. People will fall in line and tolerate all sorts to not risk all of their content disappearing.
If you want to have power, be one of those users social media doesn’t want to lose. The only way to do that is to be self hosted, and use social media to let people know what is going on in your site. Quiet is kept, once you do this you’ll start noticing all sorts of options opening up. It’s a whole different world on social media once you are known to them as a “developer” because you’re actually using things others don’t like apps and API’s.
If it is possible, and you have some time on your hands, for the same reasons, learn basic HTML and if possible, CSS. WordPress and other content management systems are very handy, but not everybody is thrilled about them. In the spiritual community, for better or worse, we have a lot of overlap with conspiracy theorists, and this isn’t all just paranoia. Some people have legitimate privacy concerns, nosey family, oppressive governments, and all sorts of reasons to prefer a regular old HTML page. Sometimes the wonderful software we use to create these brilliant sites has bugs or a plugin or two doesn’t work properly, or there are issues in the developer community.
More than once, I have found myself in the situation where there’s a new version of PHP, and developers pressure everyone to update, but not every host can do that. Sometimes the updates would break other features of the site that rely on an older version. Yet developers still push out new versions as if it is an emergency, before people would be able to use them in a stable way. The only thing that slowed this down even a little bit was when people stopped complaining and just built HTML versions of their sites. This also made readers happier because then they had stable, static pages to refer people to. Search engines also love regular old HTML pages. You will find that these will rank higher in most search engines than the a page with the exact same content within your CMS, with no penalty for repeated content.
And oh yes, put some goodies in the HTML version that aren’t in the CMS. This encourages people to visit them to see what’s new.
3. Don’t Believe the Hype, BE the Hype
A lot of manipulation, algorithms, and stealth ads determine who gets seen the most on the internet. However, be aware that there are hits and then there are good hits. Measure your success in donor and patron happiness, not in hits and likes. A lot of time the “like” issue is that you’ve said or posted something that makes people think instead of smile or laugh. They may not “like” what you have to say, but that same person trusts you enough now to pay you for some work, buy your products, or donate to keep your site alive and algorithmic ad free.
Try to avoid posting things just for likes, and oversharing or reposting unoriginal memes and sayings unless they are particularly important or moving. Also, understand that a lot of the stuff people share around came from shady sources, and you’d best believe there’s a link to them somewhere. Another problem is that often art and photos are stolen and reused without permission. I’ve seen many of my images shared around, often with people taking credit for them. Be mindful what you reshare. It builds trust and increased your popularity if you do better than those before, find the source of the art or photo, and post that with it. Search engines penalize repeated content. So adding source information not only helps the artist but increases your ranking.
4. Make It Easy For People to Find and Share Your Content
Especially if you are hosting events or broadcasts you want people to actually attend, make it easy to share anywhere.
This means you post announcements on your site or blog first, and then after that post to social media about it. When you post to social media and not your site, you are limiting each post to that platform. This is especially limiting for spiritual sites because many people avoid certain platforms for personal or ethical reasons. Also some people value their privacy. When someone logs onto Facebook everybody is notified that they’re online. Same with some other platforms. Not everybody is ready to have a conversation or deal with people just because they logged on.
By posting things on your site first, you allow them to control their own level of exposure. They’re more likely to share things if they don’t feel pressured or antagonized. Plus, it is annoying when all the information is in an image instead of text. They can’t copy and paste anything. They have to manually type things out. It’s a headache.
You want to get more happy visitors? Don’t annoy them.
Also, search engines are not scanning your images for text information. They’re scanning your text for text information.
