Hey... welcome back... this is the second part of our ongoing series where you can get free advice about how to get better search engine results & more customers from your website.

The main ingredients to getting your website high listings in the search engines are - great content with regular updates and time... sounds pretty easy doesn't it?

Here's a very sobering fact... "Most websites (more than 90%) are never found and are a complete waste of money!"

That's pretty scary & it's mind blowing to think that thousands of small business owners around the world are willing to dish out heaps of money for something that no-one will ever see. I just don't get it... and hopefully if you stick around and learn how it all works we'll be able to help you save a fortune and get more customers than your competitors.

The  reasons why most websites are never found could well be due to the following;

a) The site hasn’t been designed with search engines in mind
b) The content of the site does nothing to draw customers in or generate any interest
c) There is nothing to entice customers back or to contact your business.
d) The website isn’t being treated as an extension of your business and is not being advertised correctly

So let's tackle each of these topics one by one... the first reason why a website cannot be found in the search engines is perhaps because the website hasn't been designed with search engines in mind.

Designing your website for the search engines has absolutely nothing to do with having a great looking website... it has nothing to do with the amount of cool gadgets that you might have spinning around the page... and it has nothing to do with the number of pretty pictures on your page.

Why... because search engines can't see!!!

It's pretty obvious that we all need good looking websites if we're going to impress our customers, but that's not what we're talking about right now... we're talking about how to get your website found by the search engines.

Search engines are like those little mole things that live under the ground constantly digging through your garden... they can't see anything and all they really want is is to find the quickest path to the good stuff so that they can satisy their hunger. In the case of your website... the search engines follow a path to your website (inbound links), read though all of the computer code that goes into making your web pages and then decide (based on the words or content on your web page) wheather or not it's worth them spending time  learning what it's all about, or leaving and going to your competitors website to see if there is anything worth eating over there. If they hit any real road blocks when they're on your website, they'll just leave and go somewhere else where it's easier for them to get to the good food.

To give the search engines to best chance to find their way around your website it must have a really good website structure with very clear navigation... now I'm not going to get all nerdy on you and starting talking techno-babble because I know that your not interested in that... you just want more website traffic and more customers right ???

My first piece of advice is to make sure that when you're hiring a website designer they appear to be really well organized and take the time to explain things to you in a very clear and methodical way... simple but true... and if they do it there’s a pretty safe bet that they’ll ensure that your website file structure will be very well organized and easy for search engines to scan.

In our next post we'll talk more about how to get your website found and I'll tell you some really easy things that you can do yourself to get your website further up the search engine list.... Thanks for visiting :-)