GETTING FOUND
You can't relax yet! Web designers often use the illustration of the Kevin Costner film “Field of Dreams”. In the film Costner hears a voice telling him “If you build it, they will come”. He discovers that this means he should build a baseball stadium in his field and when he completes it “they” (baseball stars from the past) will come. Sounds improbable? Well so is the idea that you just build a website and people will automatically find it! In the film the baseball players did come. But that's just fantasy! – people won't just come to your site - you need to go and get them.
A friend of mine runs a Driving School with over 50 Instructors. He once said to me “We don't find the Internet is very good for getting new pupils”. I went looking for his website (it took some time to find) and realised why! His site was not well designed (a poor colour scheme and too large a font), it had some almost unreadable graphics, and he had very few links from other sites to his site.
The main way people will find your site is through search engines. So how do you get your site highly ranked? Well we've already covered the design issues, but what else is there?
Get links. Without any links to your site, the search engines won't even know your site is there. The more websites that link to your site, the more the search engine will think yours must be a good site. Most people get links on a “reciprocal link basis”. However, only link with good, relevant sites and beware getting involved in link exchange programmes. Search Engines don't tend to like them. Don't pay for links unless it's in a directory where people will visit your site from that directory.
Be patient. Search Engines like older sites! The older a site is the more likely it will be highly ranked (so getting a website now is an investment for the future!). Why do they like them – because it says to them that this is an established business. In fact you may find your site doesn't even get ranked by Google for 6 months – don't panic, it's normal!
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