I’ve reached the 30 page milestone with Site Build It! which is a key point in the creation of a new site using the system.

This is a mini-update to bring you up to speed with my progress to date.

I’ve uncovered a few new features now as a result of having generated 30 pages of content – you don’t get to use many of these features until you reach that crucial stage.

If you take a look at web-work-at-home.com you’ll notice that I still haven’t monetized … that doesn’t come until later, at the point where I’m getting at least 20 or more visitors a day.

I’m getting more than that on some days, and fewer on others, and I’m only listed in Google, Ask.com and Yahoo! search engines at the moment, Live Search hasn’t picked me up yet, so it doesn’t feel like the right time to be putting adverts on the site.

Let me bring you up-to-date with the latest features that I’m using as part of my SBI! package …

1) RSS feeds

RSS feeds are a key part of getting your website ‘out there’ and I discovered their value when starting this blog.

Prior to this blog, which began life as an experiment and kept on growing, I made static sites with no RSS feeds.

Within a few months, this blog was outperforming all of my static sites, getting much more interest and response and ranking higher with Alexa.

Site Build It! looks like a regular static site, but it works like a blog, informing the search engines every time you create a new page.

It’s incredibly easy to set up within the Site Build It! control panel and requires no technical or specialist knowledge.

2) Ezines

Elsewhere on this blog, I’ve called these newsletters, but they’re a key marketing technique for websites.

Once a website user signs up to your Ezine or newsletter, it enables you to reach out to them and communicate, even though they might have forgotten about your site already.

You can pull them back in, reminding them of what they’re missing or what’s new.

Previously in my posts I’d suggested using phpList for newsletters as it’s an excellent tool, if a little complex to get to grips with.

Well, Site Build It! integrates all the features of phpList – including subscribe/unsubscribe management and ‘Thanks for registering’ and account authentication functions.

It’s an excellent resource, easily set up and you can see how it works in the left hand navigation on the ‘About this site’ page on web-work-at-home.com.

3) Link Exchange

This is one of the most tedious parts of marketing your new website.

To get higher ranking in the search engines you need to get good quality, content related links to and from other websites.

Normally this is a process of surfing the web, finding good sites, emailing and keeping your fingers crossed.

As part of its integrated features Site Build It! manages the entire link exchanging process.

It finds SBI! sites and external websites (which have paid to register), matches them by your keywords and lists them automatically in your control panel along with contact details, site info and URL and the matching keyword.

You then go through each site and see which ones you want to link exchange with – I got an initial crop of 82 returned from 30 pages of keywords.

You sort them into a ‘Yes’, a ‘No’ or a ‘Maybe’.

All the sites in the ‘Yes’ pile get sent an automatically generated email inviting them to link exchange.

The ‘No’ and the ‘Maybe’ piles get tucked away for later.

I’ve had an immediate response to three of my five requests and I sorted out those requests and the reciprocal links over one weekend.

Another thing about the Link Exchange tool … it allows you to monitor links into your site, showing whether they’re good or incorrectly coded … it also means somebody can’t get away with exchanging a link then removing it later.

Another small, but useful feature is the information about Link Directories which you’re given in SBI! … a simple thing, but I wouldn’t have known where half of these resources are if I hadn’t been told.

4) Keyword performance

Site Build It! gives me constant feedback about the performance of each of my keyword-based pages, showing me how I’m ranking for each in the four major search engines as well as giving me data about the alternative keywords web surfers used to arrive at my pages.

It”s early days yet and I’m not well enough established in the search engines to be getting a lot of valuable data so far, but this is going to become a vital resource as my site establishes itself over the next few months.

5) Broken links

I hadn’t even realised this was a feature of SBI!, but the other day I got an auto-generated email telling me I had broken links on my website.

The search engines hate these – they’re ‘dead ends’ and indicate a poorly maintained site.

I had a few, but courtesy of this email, they were rectified in minutes.

What now?

I’m currently on a ’30 page break’, which doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped working.

I’ve submitted my website to the ‘Review a site’ section of the SBI! forums.

I’m continuing to make Link Exchange contacts and submitting to the relevant Link Directories, including Dmoz – the big player!

I’m proof-reading my pages, creating search engine friendly links between pages and making sure my navigation is sensible.

I’m generating ideas for my first Ezine, which I’ll publish when I have enough subscribers.

In the New Year, I’ll begin content creation once again and wait for my site to become properly established in the search engines.

What’s the big deal about SBI?

I’ve been asking a couple of my ‘teccie’ friends to give Site Build It! the ‘once over’ because I keep raving about it, and want it independently verified that I’m not barking up the wrong tree.

One colleague, when hearing of the price, dismissed it straight away saying ‘There’s the disadvantage, look at that price tag!’ (it costs about £175 … depends on the dollar conversion from $299)

The key thing about SBI! is that you have to get over comparing it with simple hosting costs which could amount to less than £20 each year … I’ve made a page about this on web-work-at-home.com

Anybody can have a website, not everybody can have a website that does any business.

Site Build It! is rich with useful features, and I haven’t even used all of them yet – there’s still much more to come.

If you’d like to find out more about SBI! you can use their useful ‘Ask a Question‘ page.

Back in the New Year with more updates.

Please comment.