Char at Essential Keystrokes recently posted a really good “Thursday Thirteen” entititled Thirteen Things Every Website Needs. She writes about having an “elevator speech” and where it should be used. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewritten elevator speeches about my different sites when listing them in blog directories, etc. It would have saved me so much time to have written them only once and just pasted in the text. She also talks about the importance of images on your site and points to a couple of places to get low cost images. I would add that you can find professional-level stock photography at Stock.xchng and those images are completely free.
Perhaps one of the most important of her thirteen things is the call for fresh information. Your site will suffer in the search engine rankings if you rarely, or never, update it. I’ve found that the easiest way to make sure that I keep fresh content on my sites is to set them up on WordPress. Because it’s completely customizable, I can make the design completely unique, while making it easy to regularly update them with fresh content.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://randaclay.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Delicious]](http://randaclay.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-delicious.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Digg]](http://randaclay.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-digg.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to StumbleUpon]](http://randaclay.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-su.png){kind=icon}
Randa -
I am glad you liked my list and thanks for bringing it here too.
Char
Mahalo for the tip about the stock photography site!
I would also argue that a brandable logo is crucial for longterm growth. People need something to identify with. Unfortunately, A brandable logo can be a bit pricey. I am hoping to win this ““win a mascot at Bloggingtips.com” contest so I don’t have to pay for one =P. Maybe you want to do a post about the contest for your readers? It may be more SEO focused and not so much design, but a free logo is a free logo =)…
Either way, great post.
I second Kuanyin’s Mahalo for the stock image site. I also agree with your recommendation for fresh content. Even if it’s not great content, you’ll get a visit from the Google freshbot and have a short term higher ranking for your newest content. If you want the keep it ranked, make it great content.