- Have you built search engine optimization
into your business Web site's pages?
You need to give every page of your Web site the best
chance of ranking well in the search engines. Search engine
optimization means that every page of your site has title
tags and meta tags that are appropriate in terms of the
key words you have chosen for that page.
Having pages on your Web site that show the title "New
Page" in the browser bar is not the way to draw visitors
to your site.
- Have you put any effort into search
engine placement?
The Web is full of spiders that constantly search for
new and updated pages for the search engines. However,
as there are millions of pages online, just putting up
your business Web site and waiting for the spiders to
find it is not a wise policy.
While I'm sure you've seen those ads that offer search
engine submission to "hundreds" of search engines,
this kind of automatic search engine submission is not
effective. What works is taking the time (or paying someone
else to take the time) to manually submit your Web site
pages to a selection of the top search engines and directories.
Some businesses also find that pay-for-search-engine-placement
search advertising is an effective way to attract the
customers they want.
- Does your business Web site have
adequate Web hosting?
While there are still a few free Web hosts out there,
many visitors will turn up their nose at your site when
they see that your business is using one. The assumption
is that a quality business will have a quality site.
Using a free or "inexpensive" Web hosting service
can also cause you problems because of excessive downtime
- periods of time when no one can access your business
Web site at all. Finding The Best Web Site Hosting Service,
by June Carroll, tells how to find the kind of quality
hosting that you need to draw and keep site visitors.
The purpose of a business Web site is to provide your
potential clients or customers who use the Internet online
access to your business, and make doing business with
you, rather than someone else, an attractive proposition.
If you can answer "yes" to the 8 questions in
this article, you have a business Web site that's well
on the way to being the business asset you want.
