How to Build a Movie Ratings & Reviews Website Like IMDb

Online marketing and business have made it easier-than-ever-before to earn money at the expense of little budget and efforts. People are bent on to buy products and services online, and it seems like it is the peak time for enthusiasts to make some serious fortune. According to Statista, global online sales accounted for 14.1% of the total sales in 2019.

One smart way to engage the right customers to the right sellers is to build a website. Seems like a difficult task? Yeah, maybe because you think you will have to learn programming languages, graphic designing, content writing, and a handful of skills to make one. But this is not the case now. You can build a high traffic website by following these few tips with the right budget under a brief duration without acquiring much personnel and will also be able to earn from that website.

Why IMDB Is the Ideal Movie Review Site

Although you might wonder, what kind of website is right for you? What about a product review site? Or a movie review site? Sounds interesting? Well, it actually is. Always choose the niche you like the most as it will keep you engaged even at times when a person doesn't feel like maintaining the site for too long.

Moreover, movie rating and review websites generate as much traffic as the famous social media and news platforms. For instance, IMDb ranks 45 globally in terms of traffic and has more than 500M visits in total.

IMDb, along with its few competitors, is considered to be the benchmark for movie ratings and review sites. Its user-friendly interface, easy navigation, large databases of thousands of movies, and constant updates in the content make it highly favorable among movie lovers.

Step by Step Guide to Building the Website

Finally, let's move to the practical area on how you can create a website that can match or at least try to match the quality of IMDb.

1. Buy a Relevant Domain Name and Reliable Hosting

The first and foremost thing will be the domain name of the website and its hosting services. You can buy a domain from any of these popular sites.

• https://www.domain.com/
• https://www.bluehost.com/
• https://www.hostgator.com/
• https://www.godaddy.com/
• https://www.namecheap.com/

There is a variety of domain name extensions; however, create a movie review website is generally targeted towards the whole world, so the most common ones will be good. For instance, IMDb uses .com extension.

One thing to keep in mind here is the domain name, which plays a crucial part in the optimization of the website. Since your niche is movies (and TV series also), the domain name should have some element of words like movies, films, TV, series, cinema, or studio, etc., in it.

After purchasing the domain name, which won't cost that much, your next task is to buy the hosting service, where your website's data will be cached. Most of the domain providers also offer hosting services. In fact, you can save some bucks by purchasing both from the same seller.

2. Develop a User-Friendly Site

This step is where your actual work begins. Although there is no need to master HTML codes, learning a few will help you to make your website more customized. There are many content management systems available in the market, e.g., WordPress.com, where you can just upload your content and apply themes to build your websites. Your work here is to keep the website interface user-friendly and easy-to-navigate. Most of the websites are now browsed through smartphones, so it is necessary for you to have a site with a good AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) score. You can use Google Analytics to research how your site is doing and will do in the future.

Categorize the Genres

One astounding feature of IMDb is that it has divided everything into categories. TV series and movies have separate pages, and these pages have further sub-pages of different genres like comedy, horror, animation, mystery, etc. These features provide compatibility to the users to browse their favorite category without any need to skip the unintended suggestions.

IMDb has a page dedicated to different genres:

Search Engine Optimize the Website

SEO has more or less become the engine of the websites. Even if you the priciest one website, you can't run it without users. For fetching users, you need to optimize your website so that it can appear when a person searches for a movie rating or review. SEO is a long time process and requires a sound strategy to achieve the goals. For that purpose, first, identify the possible keywords that could rate your website in the top results. There are many platforms where you can do keyword research and determine which ones are the best for your site.

Give Users the Authority to Rate

Users will most likely come to the website again once they have watched the movie and would like to add their opinions. For that purpose, a user-friendly rating and comment option will serve as an ideal feature. Although, try to keep the ratings unbiased by blocking suspicious actions of the users through rating or comments.

Following is an example of how IMDb lets its users rate the movie.

Do Monetization

This is where your earning comes from for constant maintenance of the site and to make some money. Use different approaches like ads, affiliate marketing, and donations to earn the profit. You can offer your website for Google AdSense for advertising or can direct users to the DVDs available at Amazon.com and media services sites like Netflix.com in exchange for some part of the product's value.

Upload Engaging Media and Content

Engagement is the key to boosting the website's worth. Especially when it comes to the movie review websites, your content should be as catchy as possible. Of course, nobody will take time to read reviews for so long before watching the movie. IMDb, for that purpose, use charts, wish lists and other gamification tools to enhance the experience of the users.

Content is the king they say, and rightly so. Engaging content with a perfect blend of SEO best practices will not only gain a user's interest but will also boost the search engine ranking. You can even hire professional writing services like a content writer or blogger for that purpose.

Always keep up with trends, upload the previews of the movies as well to increase the hype among the readers. Add relevant photos, posters, videos, trailers, and other content to aid the text. While uploading the content, always keep yourself on the right side of the laws by abiding the cyber rules and regulations. You can't use the content of any source unless it allows you, or you will have to provide a disclaimer that you don't own the material.

Conclusion

It is extremely difficult to reach the point where you can challenge websites like IMDb, but a proper strategy and commitment is all you need to go as above as you can. There is no rocket-science in website development nowadays, although keeping the right in the right place and building a website that users trust and stop by is still a daunting task.

Author Bio

The author of this article is Claudia Jeffery. She has been working as a Research Analyst at Assignment Assistance, best assignment writing service provider. She loves to writes blogs on website development and has a keen interest in following tech trends.

How to Build a Movie Ratings & Reviews Website Like IMDb key takeaways:

#1. Why IMDB Is the Ideal Movie Review Site
#2. Step by Step Guide to Building the Website
#3. 1. Buy a Relevant Domain Name and Reliable Hosting
#4. 2. Develop a User-Friendly Site
#5. Conclusion
#6. Author Bio