How Will Customers Find Your Business on the Web?

So you're a home-business owner who has just put up a snazzy website that looks good, loads quickly and is guaranteed to have customers picking up their phones or whipping out their checkbooks. That's all you need, right?

Don't start counting your cash just yet. Think about this: before customers can start throwing money at you, they have to find you -- or, rather, your website -- first. How are they going to do this? How will you help bring people to your door when your site is in what amounts to a shopping mall with millions and millions of storefronts? If I have trouble finding the information booth at the Mall of America, how on earth will I find you on the World Wide Web?

Unfortunately, it's not easy. But there are things you can do to make the hunt a little easier on all those customer wanna-bes.

First, choose your homepage title carefully. Search engines will return your title as part of the description for your page, so it had better say something informative and enticing. Face it, would you bother clicking on a link to "ABC Corp.: Our Website"? Or would you prefer, "ABC Corp.: Nuts, Crackers and Crunchy Snacks"? It's up to you.

Also, each additional page in your site should have a tailor-made title to describe its contents. So if your site has one page with news about nuts, another with details about crackers and a third with info about snacks, make sure each title reflects what a visitor will find there. Maybe, "ABC Corp.: Pecans, Macadamias and Exotic Nuts," "ABC Corp.: Soup Crackers, Matzo and Fine Biscuits," and "ABC Corp.: Trail Mixes, Munchies and More."

Second, use meta tags. These are bits of information that won't actually appear on your webpage when viewed with a browser, but help tell search engines what you're all about. Some engines -- Alta Vista, for example -- will use your "description" meta tags to give more detail about your pages when they appear in a search. For example, our imaginary ABC homepage would be more informative with a "description" meta tag that says, :Supplier of homegrown and exotic snacks for the health-conscious, with around-the-world, 24-hour shipping."

Make sure you take advantage of the "keywords" meta tag too. Not every search engine uses them, and some base your rankings on other factors as well as keywords, but they are still effective tools. The important thing to remember with keyword meta tags is to zero in on the phrases most likely to be used in searching for websites such as yours. Go for specifics over generalities.

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