Search engine registration is not terribly difficult but is often done very poorly or simply skipped. In our experience with clients, we have seen many professionally designed websites whose owners thought that their website had been registered with the search engines because someone told them that it was registered, or because someone bought a software program for $49.95 that says it registers your website with 5,000 search engines. (Reality check: There aren't that many. There are only about 50 that need your submission.)

    The acid test is to take ten minutes and go do a search, yourself, at some of the top major search engines and directories, and look for the product or service you are selling. Try Google, Excite, Yahoo!, AltaVista, iWon, Lycos and AOL Search. If your website sells Western Saddles and Tack, do a search for "western saddles". Do another one for "tack". Does your site come up on the first page or two of the search results on all of them? If it does, good for you! You've been doing things right.

    If your site doesn't come up near the top of the search results you get when looking for your products at the major search engines, you'll know that people can't find your website, even though they are looking for what you are selling. In which case it should be obvious that your website needs to be optimized for the search engines and it may need to be re-submitted to the search engines and directories. Even if they have come through your site and indexed it, they don't "like" what they've found and don't consider it relevant to your main key words.