The serious business of peace awareness requires serious websites that participate in a discussion of many important issues. To have impact, these websites must be well-written, well-designed and easy to find. Here are some tips to help achieve these goals:
- Content: The content of a peace awareness website will tend to be scholarly and sober. You cannot afford to undercut your message with sloppy mistakes in spelling, punctuation or grammar. You need to include references to keywords on each page of content so that search engine crawlers can index your content correctly. Many websites will hire a professional freelance writer with a track record in writing about serious topics. Blogs and forums are popular additions to scholarly sites that helps make them accessible to a lay audience.
- Design: The design of your website should make it easier for researchers to find specific materials such as papers, abstracts, and policy statements. This means an intelligent distribution of topics allocated one per page, with related pages arranged in hierarchical silos. Many webmasters like to start with a WordPress website because it is easy to customize. You pick a suitable theme to establish the look and feel of your site. Such themes are often available for free, but you can also buy commercial versions if you want unique features. You can include calls-to-action in your design that help capture the names and email addresses of visitors – these visitors are candidates to receive you newsletters and/or press releases.
- Backlinks: Your website should be easy to find, meaning it should appear early in search engine results for a suitable keyword. You can increase the PageRank of your site by establishing a series of backlinks on suitable websites. These backlinking sites should themselves have high PageRanks, preferably an .edu or .org domain name, and should contain content that is related to yours. You can check backlinks by using an online tool that reports all backlinking sites, along with their PageRanks. You can also inspect the backlinks of other related websites to make sure you are also receiving links from appropriate sources. Backlinks can be purchased and set up by search engine optimization experts, or you can use text link websites that offer various package deals to establish a useful set of backlinks for you.
By following these simple suggestions, your website is likely to make a significant impact in the peace awareness community.