You need to know just how useful to your startup pet care business it will be to have information easily available to everyone looking for pet sitting services in your area. More than 75% of U. S. households have access to the internet and 40% use the internet as the first place they search for information on business services. Your pet sitting home business needs to be represented on the internet so that customers seeking pet sitting services can find you. I am not just throwing a bunch of numbers at you, I am trying to give you the tools for success. So, here is the last number ? 95% of all searches on the internet use the Google search site.

Do I have to have a website for my pet sitting home business?

No. Although having a website for your pet sitting home business is a good idea, you can still have your pet sitting startup business recognized by Google by registering with their Local Business Center. Then, when someone searching for pet sitting services enters that search term and a location e.g. ?Pet Sitting Dallas? into Google search, the first sites returned are those from the Local Business Center that offer pet sitting home business services in the Dallas area. The listing from Google includes your name, location, contact information, hours of operation, and other data about your pet sitting home business. And, it's free.

But I have a website ? now what?

Even if your pet sitting home business has a website, you should still register with Google's Local Business Center. What else do you need to do? The answer to that question depends on why you choose to create a website for your pet sitting home business. If your intention was to provide your current clients with useful information about pets and perhaps announce changes in your organization such as hiring a new pet care giver, then you really need to do nothing else. If you plan to use your site to provide basic information to potential customers who already know the site's URL (website address) because of your advertising or business cards, then you need to do nothing else ? you are good to go.

However, if your purpose in having a website for your pet sitting startup was to attract new clients, then you need to understand how people use search to find a service and how to get those people to find you. Most people who type into Google the search terms for a pet sitting service in (location x) will get tens, if not hundreds, of returned sites that require looking at several pages of listings. Most people will not do that. They look at the first and maybe the second page of returns ? that's it. So, you need your pet sitting home business to show up on those first two pages of Google hits. That means you need to know about Search Engine Optimization or hire someone to help you.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Basically what happens behind the scenes is that search engines, like Google, maintain an index of websites based on the keywords or topic of the site. When someone enters a search term that matches the indexed values of a site, that site ? say your pet sitting home business ? is added to a long list that is then ranked according to criteria known only to the search engine company and understood by people who specialize in optimizing a site to improve the site's rankings in Google. You can choose to learn how to optimize your site yourself by doing extensive, time-consuming research. Or, like me, you can get some assistance from a professional.

How else can Goggle help my pet sitting home business website?

Google offers two programs that can help your pet sitting startup business make money. The first is called Google Adsense which allows Google to place advertising links on your site. If a visitor to your site ?clicks? on an advertised link, you make money. The second program is called Google Adwords, which for a small fee, allows you to select specific keywords in specific geographical areas that will bring advertisements for your pet sitting home business up as a link on other related sites. You can read more about my experience using Google in my book: Pet Sitting Success.