These are some of basics to consider when designing a web site.

Consider also, 'who will submit your site to search engines once design is complete?'. Some of design companies offering this service use 'bulk submission' software, which in many cases can be ineffective. We recommend that first time you submit your site to 'leading' search engines you do it manually. Take time to follow instructions carefully. On directory sites like Yahoo and Open Directory, you should only submit your site one time, so get it right.

The last point is 'Hosting'. If you are serious about your web business, try to avoid free-host sites. Most of them use redirection scripts that some of search engines cannot follow. If you are considering a 'Mall' site, or any site that is 'template' based, find out constraints that they impose on information you can post to site. Many will allow only basic text, product and image loading to site, and may not allow you to load 'optimized' HTML pages.

Having a web site is all about 'exposure', and search engines provide most effective vehicle for delivering your site to masses. On average, businesses spend around $1500 on improving search engine rankings, usually following a period of being 'lost in wilderness' of Internet. In many cases, careful design is all that is required, and it need only add around $200 to initial design cost of web site.

If your site is already online then above techniques can still be applied retrospectively, though making changes is more difficult than getting it right first time.

What did I find?

Zero links back to her own marketing site. Wait minute, there must be some mistake here. Maybe this isn't a page that she shares links with - even though that was one of her strongest points. Tried another page on site. This one was a little better, 103 links. And another, and another... All with similar or worse results.

Gosh, most sites easily get twice that many links without even trying. Well, I thought, maybe this isn't fair to her. The real test is where her page ranks in Search Engines. So I looked at meta tags that had been placed in source code of main page. Lots of good key words there. I took some of them and went to Search Engines.

Guess what?

None of key words in Meta tags brought this site up in top 30 listings.

As was so clearly stated in article that this great webmaster had written, "if your web page is not in top 10 to 20 listings you might as well not be listed at all".

Why on earth would we want to spend 75 bucks on a report that is written by someone who either doesn't practice what they preach, or is out and out lying to us?

Now don't misunderstand me. There are certainly some very knowledgeable people who understand search engines very well. Just make sure that you put them to test BEFORE you send them your money.