Newbies: Your Responsibilities As a Webmaster

Webmasters have a lot of responsibility when it comes to their websites. Besides from actually creating it, they have to keep up to date with new developments, market the website so it reaches its target audience, and maintain the website so it stays up to scratch.

A Webmaster will typically have some people in his or her organization that devote their time to helping with the several aspects mentioned above. The Webmaster though is the one that is ultimately responsible and in control of what's going on.

Webmasters used to be one-man-bands whereby he or she responsible would be the author, editor, developer and maintenance guy all at once. This has changed though, especially with the expansion of the Internet. Nowadays, websites tend to be quite complex and are small enterprises that need a lot of people working on them. Sometimes whole companies can be working on a single project for a website.

Although a Webmaster can retain the title of 'author', he or she typically has staff members and consults them on issues such as programming queries, maintenance issues, design and marketing strategies, and usability structures. The Webmaster in this role is known more as an Information Architect rather than just an author.

One thing that webmasters deal with is how to increase visibility of their websites in search results yielded by search engines. The Webmaster must do several things to help make the site more visible. For example, he or she must ensure that the content provided in the website is original and unique. Secondly the Webmaster needs to make sure that good, well-known websites are linked to their own. Thirdly, submit a sitemap to a well-known search engine. This is to ensure that all of the URLs on the Webmaster's website are included when searching through a search engine. Finally, the Webmaster should sign up to a Webmaster tools account to see how a search engine sees his or her site. This could include aspects such as indexing details, crawl errors, and FAQs.

Another way to manage Internet marketing is through the use of blogs. A Webmaster may use one to receive and share information on just about any topic they wish. Blogs are reverse chronically ordered personal journals that act as a big melting pot for like-minded individuals. Just about anyone can create a blog and they are becoming more and more popular. Imagine having a meeting with other webmasters from around the world. Well it's pretty much the same thing except there's no need for travel, the 'meetings' have no time limit, and they are permanent. Businesses and political careers have been made and broke on blogs. With personal opinions, reviews, thoughts, suggestions and tips being broadcast over the web, there's nowhere to hide!

Blogs have that personal touch because real people write them. There is no beating around the bush and you can write basically what you want. They can as a great resource for marketing all the while benefiting your website. In addition to this, blog advertising networks are expected to become a multi-billion dollar industry by 2010.