As a business owner or someone responsible for marketing a business you want to do opposite. Instead of remaining hidden from view, you want to make it as easy as possible for members of your target market to find you again and again.

You may have a PhD, worked for big name clients, provide outstanding service or have a new ground breaking product but if people can't find you it is tough to build revenue. What you want is to be found so prospects contact you and you can convert them to client status.

What happens when someone is looking for a new product or service? More and more customers and consumers use internet to search for goods and services they need, to point that 'google' has become a verb. They may also use search engines provided by Yahoo, AOL and MSN.

A prospect types in a set of keywords, your name or your company name into a search engine, with Google being used by far most frequently. Can they find your website? Go to www.Google.com and try following three tests:

1. If a prospect hasn't heard of your company they won't be searching for your firm by name. Instead they will be searching using keywords that describe problem they want solved or type of information they are looking for. If they are looking for ways to motivate employees, that's what they will type in search box. If they are looking for adventure vacation ideas for Costa Rica, they'll enter that in search box.

My prospects might enter, 'attract more clients', 'marketing coach', 'web marketing plan' or 'web lead generation in Google. When they do, they'll find my site at top or at least in first 10-15 listings.

Type problem you solve or solutions you offer into Google's search box. Is your site listed at or near top of listings? Is it even in top 100?

2. Type your own name in search box. Does your web site come up at top of page or in first 20 listings?

3. Type your name and/or your company name in search box, for example, "Charlie Cook" or "Marketing For Success". Did Google find your site in or near top spot?

If you aren't happy with results of these tests, your website needs work.

How to Avoid Playing Hide and Seek With Your Business

Now there is such a huge amount of misinformation on Web about search engine submission, I thought it was high time I wrote a basic tutorial to help webmasters sort fact from fiction.

Before You Begin

Before you can start to submit your site to search engines, you need to make sure it is ready for indexing. Use following checklist to be absolutely sure your site is submission-ready:

Are all pages complete? (No “under construction” pages) Are all links valid? (No broken or dead links) Are all pages optimized? Are all pages search engine compatible? Have you used Robots.txt or Robots META Tag to prevent pages you want hidden (e.g. shopping cart) from being indexed? If your site is an e-commerce site, is your ordering process or shopping cart functional and tested for bugs? Are you prepared to handle a sudden influx of traffic and/or sales? Have you tested your site for usability? (Google “web site usability” for more information) To make your job of submitting easier, you also need to prepare a text file or spreadsheet listing following:

Your site’s main URL The URLs for other pages on your site that you will be submitting Your site’s Title (the name of your site you want listed in engines. This is usually your company name e.g. Atlanta City Tours or Acme Widgets) A short description of your page/site content (10-20 words) A long description of your page/site content (30-50 words) A list of target keywords for your page/site Name of submitter Email address of submitter (we suggest using a real account you check regularly, but one where you have strict controls over incoming spam email – you will receive some spam as a result of your submissions!) Address and contact details of your company (some directories ask for this) It is particularly important to keep track of email address you use when submitting your site, because some directories, like Yahoo for example, require you to cite this address if you want to make changes to your listing later on.