It's good having a nice web site but how can they find it!
The dilemma with search engines is that only the first one or two pages of returns they provide for keyword searches are ever viewed - after that people rapidly lose interest. So, if potential customers search for your product and your web site is down at number 245 then they're simply never going to come across it - even if you're offering the best deal around.

What Can You Do?
First of all you need to be realistic. For instance, if you've decided that your keywords are to be 'fashion clothes' and you're hoping to get your site to no.1 for this search term, then you're not being realistic. Not only will there be thousands of other sites competing for the same place, but many of them will be investing large sums of money each month to try to ensure they're there and you're not.

Therefore the best thing to do is to refine that search term to something much more specific. This obviously means less hits, but at least when customers do type in this search term there's a much better chance of them finding your site.

What We Do
We will always bear the above in mind when constructing your site so that when search engines do index your new web site they will register it as being very relevant to the specific keyword phrase we want to concentrate on. It's important to try to get this right from the start as it is much more difficult and takes considerable time to re-adjust the site and get the search engines to register the changes made.

In normal circumstances, if we're starting the site from scratch and it hasn't previously been submitted or detected by the search engines, then we would expect it to start appearing in returns in as little as 2-3 weeks. You can of course choose to pay for search engine listings - which will get you indexed within 2-3 days, but won't normally make any difference to the actual position you achieve.

What if I Don't Get a Good Listing?
Well, in some cases, because of overwhelming competition, it realistically may never be possible to get well placed. However, in most cases we should be able to do some tweaking to your site to re-focus on other keywords. Your site would then be re-submitted and we would see if that helped - although it can take up to 8 weeks to register.

If we haven't designed your web site ourselves, but you'd like us to try to help with your search engine placement, then we do offer a service where we completely overhaul your site and make it as search engine friendly as possible before re-submission.

We wouldn't dream of suggesting this is possible in every case - it quite simply isn't - but we would guarantee to at least give your site a good chance of success. Please contact us for a quote.

There are some steps you can take yourself too - which we would advise you about.

Is My Site Any Use Without a Good Listing?
Of course!
Remember that, if nothing else, your site is a fabulous color brochure about your business which you can use to promote your business in a variety of ways.

For instance, you may decide to take out a very small advert in a prestigious magazine or newspaper - something which would be unthinkable normally because of the size of the advert required and the subsequent cost. But as you'd basically need to have not much more than your web site address, this suddenly becomes very cost effective.

You can also include the web address in any correspondence you have - emails or postal - as well as using it on any flyers you decide to send out.

Another possibility is that, almost no matter what your business is, you can virtually guarantee that someone will have constructed a directory about the subject - providing links to relevant web sites such as yours. You may need to pay them something to get the link, and the effectiveness of such sites varies enormously, but it's certainly worth a try.

So far, we've not had anyone saying that their web site hasn't been at least of some help to them - most customers are happy with the business it does provide, even if it hasn't made them into a millionaire - yet!