There are some excellent businesses with excellent products but sadly many of them will just never make it on the Internet. Why is that? Quite simply they either have a very bad website or they just don't realise there's a lot more to it than just plonking your web page on a server and submitting the url to Google. (If you're wondering "what's a server?" this article is probably not for you.)
The first point then is never design a website solely on the basis of what you like unless you're starting some sort of club, say 'society for collectors of rusty old nails'. Decide who your audience is and then design it with that end user in mind. Many things may appear obvious to you when using your own site but make sure it's obvious to others who don't have a clue how your site works! It's a good idea to make sure all your pages are accessible from the index or home page and make it as easy to navigate as possible.
But let's move on to question in hand, how do I get on the front page of a search engine? Well it certainly won't happen if you do nothing, people will not just mysteriously turn up at your website and start buying. We need to apply Search Engine Optimisation techniques to our web pages in order to promote our site in what's termed as organic or natural searches. We've all been to Google or Yahoo and seen the special shaded boxes at the top or bottom of the results page or the listings that appear in a divide on the right hand side of the page. Those are all adverts, what's known as pay per click and those businesses pay the search engines every time someone clicks on their advert and it can cost a fortune (not for the faint hearted).
The rest of the listings are the natural result of a search done for the 'string' or term you typed in as a query. The search engine displays the compiled results in the order it thinks best through an automated process called an algorithm. What the Webmaster needs to do is influence that result. So what are the influencing factors?
These can be divided into two groups known as on page and off page optimisation. On page optimisation is by far the most straight forward and will take up a fairly small amount of your time. Firstly choose your keywords carefully or you may either drive the wrong traffic to your site or never get listed. Secondly make sure your keywords appear significantly and consistently in the text of your page and put one or two instances of each in bold or italics. Make sure you've used "headings" these appear in the HTML code as h1 or h2 etc. Don't make the mistake of using pretty graphic images for titles or section heading because the search engines can't read them, and make sure that there's a keyword in all of the headings you use. Well that's a start and we'll continue next week with a better look at on page optimisation.
But if you've got a website and just discovered that you're invisible and now you're in a fit to do something quickly, firstly be assured there's thousands of others in the same boat and secondly know that there are people who can help you. The Internet is still an information community and plenty of people share information.
So if you can't wait several weeks to read all my articles have a look at a brilliant FREE ebook that has the whole thing neatly laid out in understandable English. Visit this link on my site http://www.willow-wood.biz/Downloads.html (or visit my blog http://how-to-be-top-on-google.blogspot.com) and download the .pdf it's packed solid with must know gems by SEO wizard Brad Callen. Everything you need to know is right there and if you put it into practise you will win! My email is there too and if you're struggling or would like advice feel free to drop me a line, if I can't help you I will point you in the right direction.