As you probably know, a professional looking website is useless if no one can find it. Your competitors are getting smarter each day, which means if you need to do more and think more in order to survive in today’s competitive market. It’s true that you need to have a professional website, but even more important is that you need to make it search engine optimized. To optimize a website for search engines is not just about putting keywords in as many places as you can to fool the system – those days are gone. You need to do much more and if you do them well your website will add value to your business for a long period of time without spending a dime in advertising.

The process should start before you even design your website. You or your web designer need to research the keywords that are suitable for your business and then design the website with them in mind. This is so important and most people don’t do it in this order. If you know nothing about keyword research, you need to find someone who does. There are freelance web designers who can do this for you as part of a website design package; so if the cost is not much more you should seriously consider it. Someone who understands SEO will give you a much more valuable website – remember this!

Whether you are a web designer or business owner, you need to have a plan on how to structure your website for the maximum SEO benefit. Research your competitors’ website and see what they have done; but don’t assume they know what they’re doing because most don’t, especially if you are in an industry that’s not very SEO savvy. So always ask someone who has some experience in SEO, and get advice from them; this way you will know you are doing the right things. But if you are serious about using the Web to attract customers or sales then you need to study SEO yourself. It’s a complex subject, but the time spent studying it will be well worth it whether you are a business owner or a web designer.