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So you have completed your nice shiny new website and it is up there on the Internet for everyone to see. So where is all your new business that you were expecting it to bring in? Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complicated process that takes time. Google (because let's face it, that's where people are going to find you) likes to see well established sites with relevant content that other people also rate as good sites. How does Google make the decision that other people think it is a good site? Overwhelmingly (although not exclusively) they rely on inbound links to your site from other sites. And the better the quality of the site that is linking to you, the more weight they apply to that "recommendation".

Be aware that just searching for your site in Google on your own machine is unlikely to yield the same results that other people are seeing. Google uses your previous searches to customise your results and there is a good chance you have previously been searching for your site to evaluate its performance. Make sure you either search from a "clean" browser (i.e. one with all the cookies, etc., deleted from it) or use an online tool.

It is also important to be aware of the timescales involved. Building up the reputation of a site takes time. Google likes to see evidence of a site being permanent and also being reliable. Therefore choose a good hosting provider because Google's spiders will frown upon the site being down too frequently. Be patient and, with the right work, you will find your site will slowly move up the rankings.

It can very often be tempting to employ techniques other than "white hat" to boost your site's ranking. White hat techniques are those that are deemed normal and acceptable whilst other techniques are frowned upon by Google and the other search engines. Always use reputable white hat techniques as presumably your site's long-term rating is what is important to you. Although other techniques can result in a quick boost for your site, in the long-term you are likely to get "found out" and dropped down Google's rankings. Also be aware of the grey area techniques of link exchanging. You will more than likely start to receive emails from people claiming to have a site with a high page rank and they want to do an exchange of links with you. Whilst on the face of it this may seem like a good idea, these sites are very often "link farms" containing hundreds of links to other sites. If these sites get found out and demoted by Google, there is a very good chance that sites that link to them may also get punished.

The type of inbound links you should be seeking are those where the other site's content is relevant to your own. Obviously your competitors are unlikely to link to you, so you need to find discussion sites where their content is relevant to what you do. Again, just asking them to link to your home page because you want them to send business your way is unlikely to work. So get some extra pages on your site containing useful content which people will want to read. Asking another site owner to link to this content is much more likely to work if this enhances their own site.

Mike Duffy is a software consultant and performs a considerable amount of work in the field of SEO. If you found this article helpful, you may wish to use this tool that he wrote to evaluate your results Where Am I On Google.