Public Pages are an easy way to create and publish a website. But with more than 300,000 existing Public Pages, standing out is becoming difficult. Here are 10 useful tips that will help you create a Public Page with a better design and higher traffic!

1 – Select a good Public Page name

good-username

The first step is to get a Public Page with a good username. When you activate your Public Page, your username (which is used for the page URL) should be:

short : short names are usually easier to remember.
descriptive: if your Public Page is about cooking, it should contain the word “cooking”. However, according to the Terms of Service, your username can not be a generic name. If your username is composed of several words, use dashes “-” to separate them: they will make the address more legible and search engine friendly.
creative: “amelie-recipes” is certainly better than “amelie23″

2 – Pick the best content from the Ecosystem and the Web

Once your Public Page is created, you need to fill it with interesting content. You may only put widgets that are related to your topic. Those widgets can come from:

the Netvibes Ecosystem, the widget directory. There are 180,000+ widget in the directory, sorted in 9 categories. You can browse them by popularity, freshness or search them by keywords. The directory can be quickly accessed by clicking on Add content (top left of the screen).
news websites. You can add any RSS feed to your public page. Select feeds that make sense when put together. If your Public Page is about gadgets, you may add Engadget, Gizmodo and Crunchgear feeds, one next to the other.
all over the Web. With the HTML widget (Add Content > Essential widgets), you can embed any Flash widget or video from Youtube and other popular video websites. Simply get the Embed code from these websites, and paste it into the HTML widget.

3 – Plan your Public Page offline before publishing

With the recent addition of Multiple Personalized Pages, you can now have more than one private page. You can use one of them to build a draft version of your Public Page. When you’re satisfied with the content, go the the Page management section and drag’n'drop the tabs from this private page to your Public Page.

4 – Fill your Public Page description, keywords and upload an avatar

description

In order to make your Public Page searchable, you should write a good description and tag your Public Page with keywords. To do so, open your Profile (top right of the screen) and click on Edit my profile. Now, in the Profile section, enter a short text to describe your Public Page and a few keywords. These pieces of information will then be visible by search engines such as Google or Bing.

Also think about uploading an attractive avatar. It will make your Public Page easily recognizable among all the anonymous profile pictures.

5 – Promote your Public Page

Friends and family will be your first fans. Shows them your Page so they can spread the word.

find-friends

If they are already Netvibes Users, you can find them with the Find friends feature located in the Contacts panel (top right of the screen). This functionnality will let you search in your address book people who already have a Public Page and add them as friends on Netvibes. They will get a notification e-mail and will probably go visit your Public Page.

If your friends are not Netvibes Users yet, you can invite them with the Invite friends feature located in the same panel.

You can also promote your Public Page outside Netvibes. Use Facebook, Twitter or any other social media to get new visitors!

6 – Share links regularly

Now that you have dozens of followers, you need to keep them posted with fresh content. The easiest way to share interesting stuff with them is to use the ad-hoc sharing feature. This feature lets you post links to your Activities, a stream that all your friends can see. You can share links to hot articles, cool widgets and even entire tabs full of great content.

Post new links at a regular pace and your followers will keep following you!

7 – Interact with your visitors

Another way to interact with your visitors is to start a conversation. With the Wall widget (Add Content > Essential widgets), your visitors can leave a message on your Public Page with text and emoticons.

8 – Design your own theme

theme-designer

Content is key, but design is just as important. To build a remarkable Public Page, you need it to look unique with a custom theme. Creating your own theme is fairly easy with the Theme Designer. All you have to do, is pick a few colors and create a banner. The cool thing is that everything is hosted for free by Netvibes.

To learn more about theme design, read our previous post: Design and share your own themes.

9 – Hide tabs and widget borders

On public pages, you can make borders fade away so your page looks slicker.

For widgets, select the transparent color and they will blend into the background. For tabs, open the Settings window and check Hide public page tabs. This last option is especially handy when you only have one tab on your Public Page.

Learn more about hiding tabs and widget borders in our previous post: What’s up at Netvibes?

10 – Go further with our business solutions

In some cases, Public Pages are just not enough. If you want to build an Intranet, or a Page that others can personalize, you may be interested in our business solutions. To discover how much further you can go with Netvibes, simply head to business.netvibes.com.

Conclusion

With these 10 useful tips, you’re now ready to build a great Public Page. If you have more tips to share or simply like this article, retweet it or leave a us comment!

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