Changing One Webpage To Appear More Businesslike: How I Did It

I published a webpage about books on Squidoo called Current Bestselling Books. It is a new page, just created this September 13th, so the traffic is very slow. This has given me time to re-define the webpage to be a more pleasant experience for any visitor. It's not the prettiest of pages but I think it will do for now. One good aspect of making pages on Squidoo is that you have so many options as to the layout of your webpage you can make your page almost to any design you can think of. But within the module system Squidoo has set up.

I have chosen to highlight a number of books available on Amazon.com. The page itself is more like a bookshelf that I place books for sale and either people buy that book or another or they move on to other websites. A very simplistic view, but you should try to look at it from that perspective. On your Squidoo webpages you provide visitors with the same options - stay and buy or go ("thanks for stopping by! Tell your friends about my website" I yell as you leave.

My plan is to have a note about each book which will give the page a bit more stickiness rather than just having the books themselves all lined up. Having short reviews should help get the page indexed by the search engines and by updating frequently, there will be some positive movement in the PageRank. This obviously won't happen overnight because this is a very competitive niche. I have no illusions of this page making a ton of money over night. It doesn't work that way - you have to put in some work beyond just putting your page on the Internet.

You have to look at what any visitor to your webpage is looking for. Hopefully if someone has come to my page I am hoping they are looking for a book to purchase and or just to brouse the selection. You can have your selection remain static, or you can go in and change things up. New items, move some that are not getting any clicks out or demote them to a different area of the page. You haven't removed the item, but simply placed it in a less conspicuous place - thereby freeing up room for other items to be shown. Just your basic retail.

That's what I'm doing and the updates help bring in more people to check out the page. Currently it is mostly fellow Squidoo people and the occasional person from search engine traffic. Obviously if I am going to make this page any kind of success, I need to increase the number of visitors. One of the things I am doing is writing this blog post showing how I am actually working to make this page succeed. Another is having my webpage's address in my signature when I leave messages in the forum at Squidoo. It's called the Squidu Forum and you will learn a lot about making a great lens on Squidoo by going and reading as much as you can. The go back again.

Also I posted in the "Critque My Lens" section of the forum and some people gave it the thumbs up that they liked it. Those were from people already on Squidoo. Those not on Squidoo can't say they like the webpage except in the comments section at the bottom, which are always appreciated. If you think I'm missing something let me know so I can address it.
Finally I am looking for backlinks that will help the page rank a little. This means moving a little closer to the top of the heap when the search engines which means - more traffic, more sales, more success - which is why we're here. I will be reporting on how this little project progresses.