2. Is your website designed for search engine optimization

If you don't know much about search engine optimization, you should learn.  You can find free resources online or buy a book to explain the details. 

We will give you a lot of information here, but you can really dig into the methodology and find many useful tips if this is something in which you want to specialize.

You can also hire a consultant to do this work for you.  However, even if you are going to hire someone, you need to know more about it so that you don't hire the wrong person, or accept unrealistic promises that may cost you a lot of money. 

The basic idea of search engine optimization is this:  Your prospective customer goes online and uses a 'search engine' like Google to type in some 'keywords'. 

These keywords represent what he or she knows about the product or service they wish to find and how they most often think about these terms. 

The idea that you must understand how your customer thinks to optimize your search engine ranking is a little frightening, but it is true. 

The good news is that you can find information about keyword searches and design your keyword references and tags to satisfy the most common words people use to search for your products. 

We'll talk more about this later.

Once your customer types in the keywords and performs a search, she or he will see a list of sites that meet the criteria of their search. 

You want to be in the top 10 sites on that list - preferably the top FIVE.
 
Otherwise, it is unlikely your prospective customer will look at your site to find what they want.

When your customer gets to your site, you must present the content and products or services they expect to find there. 

If you use artificial keywords to mislead prospective customers, eventually you will be thrown off search engine lists, so don't purpose try to mislead customers to your site.

It will backfire. 

By hiring a good search engine expert or getting educated on how to put together your search engine keywords, META tags and other references, you can advertise your site content and identify your business as one that the prospect will want to see. 

When they come to your site and see the products they were looking for, you have taken the first step to sales. 

Of course, search engine optimization can't KEEP your customer on your site or make them buy, but getting them to visit your website is a big part of the battle!

Be sure that every page in your website has appropriate title tags, and META tags.
 
If you sell more than one product or service, or provide valuable information, this information may be a page other than your home page that draws your traffic.  

So, don't just focus on the home page content, keywords and titles.

Here is another thing you should know about the web and your customer searches. 

Spiders are engines that spend their days searching for new pages and sites on the web and for updates to existing sites.  This information is used to provide the most up-to-date references when your customer performs a search.

If your website has appropriate keywords and tags, spiders will find it, but you should not depend on these for your traffic.

You can pay a company to submit your website to search engines using an automated procedure, but this technique often fails.  Search engines often ignore these submissions. 

You are better served to submit your site to these search engines and directories, or to pay someone to manually submit your site. 

You can also look into search engine advertising (using advertising programs like Google AdSense).  It does cost money but it ensures placement of your business name and website link in a visible position on the search engine page. 

• Introduction
• Why Is My Website Traffic So Low?
• What is the quality and integrity of your web hosting service?
• Does your website give enough information for customers to contact you or to purchase your product or service?
• Understanding Your Target Customer
• Design A Website To Attract More Clients - Keywords
• Use Keywords in Page Titles
• Understanding Keyword Density
• Site Component Design
• Web Hosting Services and Domain Names
• Website Storefronts and e-commerce Sites
• Design A Website To Attract More Clients
• Are You Search Engine Savvy?
• 15 Simple Tips To Get Repeat Search Engine Traffic
• Keeping Up With The Competition
• Become A Web Sleuth
• Getting Professional Help
• Summary

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