search engine optimization (seo)

If surfers can't find your website you lose.
One analogy would be: having a website, but not showing up on the search engines is like having a phone, but not being listed in the phone book.

I see an overwhelming and recurring problem when I'm giving site evaluations to prospective clients for makeovers. When they tell me their website isn't doing very much for their business, I can see why—it hasn't been optimized for the search engines. The necessary ingredients are missing!

Your designer needs to know what the search engines are looking for and add the necessary components for successful results. And finally, your site needs to be submitted to the major search engines.

reasonable expectations
Some people are under the assumption that it's as simple as having someone create a killer website; put it on the Internet, and new customers are going to find you—guess again.

There are two basic scenarios, based on the intent of your website:

1) Local audience
Let's say you're a bed & breakfast in Rochester, NY. Since there are only a few B&Bs in Rochester, you're a big fish in a small pond. If your designer has optimized your site for the search engines, it should be easy to find your website.

2) National audience
Now, let's say you're a shoe store and you want to reach the entire USA. Since there are so many online shoe stores, there's no way you can do well unless you pay for it.

Paying for ranking
I have many clients who have a nationwide audience, most are using Google's AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture). (The shoe store prefers this one for her business.)

You choose keywords, create an ad campaign (or several campaigns based on different keywords) and pay when someone clicks on your ad. This is generically referred to as a pay-per-click ad campaign.

Link popularity
Some search engines give websites that have other sites linking to them, a better ranking—this is called link popularity. Many sites have a links or resources page where they exchange links with other websites. Sometimes the links are interesting/useful resources for a visitor, but often they're sole purpose is to increase link popularity.

Since search engines are constantly changing the way they function, to be successful your designer must keep up to date with the latest SEO strategies.

marketing
your web site enables you to take advantage of new ways to spend your marketing dollars! It's up to you to promote your website—online and offline: biz cards, letterhead, brochures, phone book ad, mailings, print ads, radio, TV, T-shirts, publish articles, etc. Join associations (local and national) that will link to your site.

YOU need to drive traffic to your site!