Developing your site
 

What does everybody do when they launch a new site? I've made a few sites and although a couple of them have been quite successful I've had nothing fantastic. For me I think of a good idea that I could make my site about and then I go straight into making the layout / cms for it. I think I need to look into target audience / competition etc. more but I'm not really sure where to start when it comes to stuff like that, so what does everybody else do?

You can goto the main serach engines and add ur URL to their list and they will look through ur site...(or in the case of google the googlebots will)
Not all sites get on the list but most will

The best way to get your site indexed by search engines is to have a link on a site with good link popularity. Im more into SEO than programming and design. Whenever I start a site I submit to a bunch of directories and work and SEO and link popularity.

-C

Totally agree. You'll get indexed a lot faster if you manage to get a link from a site already indexed.

I have made a point of contacting other succesful site owners and asking there thoughts on what has made them sucsessful, you would be amazed at how many are willing to share there success and failures.

Check out this article Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone by Brett, This article has personally helped me alot and is a must read for all the webmasters.

Hope it will help you too.

An interesting thought, as i'm designing the first site i've ever actually taken seriously, i will be looking to generate a little more traffic... once i'm able to finish it hopefully have it reasonably ready by the end of May. (after exams, lol)