I think good content is crucial to a website. I've had my own up for nearly 10 years, starting it to highlight the books I write (from environmental science fiction to fantasy to my own true cancer survival stories--plus a host of unpublished children's stories, interviews, etc.
I have also put my favorite photos up--from my mountain burning to calm Doubtful Sound in New Zealand, with mist floating atop the water--a mirror image.
I get emails from around the world. I offer the first few chapters of all my books for free and have a standing offer for a free copy of my first cancer survival story, "Crossing the Chemo Room," to any cancer patient who cannot afford to buy it. I sell my books through
http://www.amazon.com, but I give most of them away, having spent the last 3 summers/their winters in New Zealand to help raise money for their cancer survivor (my kids ski).
A visitor could spend hourse browsing through my website, reading everything from an interview with International Figure Skater Sasha Cohen (which I did for a skating magazine when my kids were skating at the same rink as Sasha and Michelle Kwan) to "A Visit to Heaven," my favorite interview--with a sleptical medical doctor who had a nearly fatal asthma atack, his hear stopped, his brain got no oxygen for several minutes, and the doctors were about to "pull the plug" when his wife asked for a second opinion.
The doctor came back, and although he has difficulty talking, is blind, and is mostly in a wheelchair, when he speaks of the things he saw, even my 12-year-old listens with her mouth open--and the photo I got was untouched, snapped quickly, only one, as I was running late and had already done two feature stories that day for our local paper.
So, content counts! And being on the web a long time counts! And adding links, and answering emails from Africa, etc. Let's keep the web personal and interesting, and people will want to see our sites.