If you were to think of your site as a shop on the high street of your local town - People would walk past, see your displays and shop front and maybe pop in. This however is not true for the web. The way the internet is made ? there is no such thing as passing trade. You can have the best site in the universe. You can have a revolutionary product which will change the way millions of people search the internet. You could have a very important message that everyone should read ? but no one will come if they don't know where it is.

To get people to visit your site, to read your message, to buy your products they need to know where to find you. People need to know your website address, your URL or be able to follow a hyper link to your site.

How do we tell people about your site? Word of mouth? Yes, this works but you can only tell so many people face to face. Should you send out an email to a list of people you recently bought from someone on the internet (10,000 email addresses for $10)? In one simple word - NO ? This is the easiest way for you to lose your website, your credibility, your hosting - even your email and internet account. This is called spam.

Even though you personally may get tons of spam in your mailbox each day doesn't mean you should do it too. It is something protected by law. Yes, you can be in serious trouble if you spam. As a rule of thumb - Only email people who have either emailed you (not spam) or someone who has personally asked you to send them information of a particular type. It would be a waste of time sending someone an email about automobiles if they are only interested in stamp collecting. I know, there could be an exception to the rule where someone could be interested in stamps with automobiles on them.

Statistically most people visit web sites by searching for them in a search engine. The funny thing is, that even if someone knows your URL or website address, they still type it into a search engine. Almost everyone has either a search engine as their homepage or they use the one provided by their internet provider and that almost always has a search box provided by a search engine.

They type your URL into the search box and press enter. If you aren't listed in the search engine they are using, guaranteed one of your competitors will be.

Just to summarize:

You need to get your web site indexed by the search engines so people can find you!