Small Businesses Don't Get The Most Out Of Their Websites

A survey by Microsoft of 400 small businesses has discovered that many waste a lot of money producing websites that can't be found in the search engines.

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It seems that too many firms don't know how to promote their website or think that it is too complicated or expensive.

Now to some extent this is an "I win, you lose" situation as only 10 websites can be on the first page of Google at any one time.

This is a sad reflection of too many web designers who are happy to take the money from clients and design websites but have little interest in helping their clients get their money back from extra business.

Even if the web designers don't want to become involved in the search engine optimisation themselves, they should be recommending someone else to their clients.

I enjoy the challenge although it does frustrate me to see my main website bobble around from about 6th to 14th when I search for business coaching in Google.co.uk.

There are a few simple rules that can make a massive difference to the way that search engines deal with a website:

• key word research and optimisation of the copy around those key words
     
• content rich pages rather than pretty pages
     
• effective use of page titles
     
• incoming links from relevant sites focused on key words

On a similar theme another news item tells us how casually companies choose their website name - more details.

Many spend less than an hour on the decision.

Are there are any search engine optimisation experts who would like to be one of my guest bloggers?