Need to get your website recognized? If you are a small business with big plans you probably had a website built and thought orders would just appear. You also may have tried some Pay Per Click advertising and paid to be listed on some directories.

Most people online do not want to go through an online directory to find you. Most people searching for something go through a search engine such as, Google, Yahoo, or MSN Live. They type in a keywords or phrases describing what they want and the Search Engine automatically finds a list of websites, starting with what the it believes to be the most relevant results.

Being in the first group of results is what will bring traffic to your website. It doesn't matter what you have to offer, the key to success online is to be found on the first page of these search results when someone is looking for what you have to offer.

The great thing about those search results is that they are working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year. The down side is that if you cant be found in those results, your neighbor across the street could be looking for what you have to offer and youll never know.

If you have tons of traditional business experience the things you have used in the past to promote your store are going to be pretty much useless online. For instance, before the internet, it was not unusual for a business to spend thousands dollars per month on Yellow page advertising. When the internet first went public that business had to be sure that those ads pointed to their website. Now after only a few years, most households dont even know where their phone book is anymore.

On your online store, you may have a few selections for a specific item. In your store you may display these items according to cost. The typical online shopper is not searching for every item you have to offer. They are searching for one brand and one style at every store that offers that one specific item.

However, a local store owner is possibly complaining that he could typically get this specific item from his supplier, and it would not sell until he discounts it at the end of the season. However, this same item in a big city would have customers lining up, hoping to get a chance to buy this specific item as soon as it was delivered.

When the local store owner decides to put his inventory online, it allows the kids in the big city to find the item they want regardless of what small town store has them! It takes a bit to wrap your head around the concept, but the online shopper is going to be more specific about what they are looking for and they dont really care where your store actually is as long as you can get the product they want delivered to them.

If you are a traditional store that wants to sell your products online, it is going to be vital to your success to offer your products from the top down rather than trying to use your website to sell the stuff you could not move in your store. The structure of your website has to break down products and categories and present those images in an appealing way. A good SEO will be able to research the products you have to offer that match up with the hottest searches performed and help you to target your campaign.

Although it is nice, only having a cool website is not enough. Your website must be built in a search friendly way. Let's say that you put a great picture of a specific item on your website. It is the hottest item going and everyone wants it. But if all you have is a picture, the Search Spider cant read your picture. It is not human. It searches for text. Text in the form of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and in the form of content on your page. These are spider food.

The Search Spider goes through your site, following your linking structure, recording what it finds and takes it back to the Search Engine Database. The Search Engine runs that data through its algorithm to determine what searches your data might be relevant to and how relevant your data is compared to other websites it has recorded. Confused?

Whats it all mean? The world has changed my friend. Changed in ways we could not predict. If we had computers in the eighteen hundreds, they would have predicted that every city in America would now be twenty feet deep in horse manure.

Your website is proof that you are trying to be a contender in the new way of doing business. Now you have to index your site so search engines will find it. Your products will then be identifies and produced as relevant search results when the search is over.

Rather than showing a picture of your product and writing a caption under it that says something like This is a very popular item this year, use the terms that someone would type in when they are looking for this exact product. This will more than likely take some effort and refining but diligence and persistence pay off.

The other thing that takes some understanding and patience is to know that the Search Spider does not live on your website. He has other places to go too. You have to allow him time to get around to checking out your changes.

Dont be afraid to do some investigative work on your own. Check out your competition. See how they describe the products on their site. A little homework on your part will also help you get an understanding of what youre up against.

If you are using Pay Per Click advertising they will provide Keyword Suggestion Tools. But please use caution. These tools are really focusing on getting you to pay to show up in as many searches as they can. Although that might sound like exactly what you want too, the truth is that aside from being expensive, if your site does not exactly match to what the searcher is looking for, you are wasting money.

A Search Optimization Service will be help you focus your energy and resources in the areas that will get you more conversions because you will be showing up for the most relevant searches all the time rather than just when you can afford Pay Per Click advertising.