Once you've got a website you want people to find and visit it. To find anything on the Internet a special website, known as a search engine, is used. Google.com.au and Yahoo.com.au (there are many others) are well known search engine websites. A search engine website allows the entry of words to search for products / services / information meeting specific needs. The results of websites matching the search are then displayed. There can be hundreds or millions of websites that match a search. The higher ranked your site is on a results list, the more likely it will be visited. As the Internet is fast surpassing physical based directories (such as the Yellow Pages) as the preferred choice of product / service search, you may wish to ensure your site is very near the top.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of modifying your site to ensure that when an appropriate search is performed, your website gets a high ranking in the subsequent results. To do this your site may need to be improved or optimised. This is done by altering the site structure, page design, content and keywords.

Currently using the Internet to search for products and services can be a very hit and miss affair. The reasons are as follows:

	Each search engine website uses different criteria to pinpoint matching websites.
	The Internet was originally designed to share information and not to be a sales tool.
	As each business is different, each search criteria is different. So what works for one business - even in the same industry as yours, may not work for your business.

Because of these problems, SEO can be very expensive and the outcome very often elusive and difficult to measure.

Efforts are underway to make the Internet more sales friendly. It will make an Internet search more relevant to individual needs - but we are not there yet.

Despite the cost, there are some basic, low priced ways to make your website more appealing to search engine results. These can be done during the initial website build or added to existing sites. At cpnwork.com we take a simple, cost effective approach to SEO to help you use technology effectively!