Your website is part of a vast connection of websites known as the World Wide Web (www). The Web has the potential of bringing an endless supply of information to its users. If you can name it, you can find it. Can a prospective visitor find you on the web?

Your web pages contain information about you that is not displayed on screen. Search engines, spiders and web crawlers use the information to catalogue your site. This information is used to identify you when someone does a web search. If you don’t know what your website has in the information section, ask. Here’s what to look for:

• Page Title — this is usually displayed in the browser title bar. It is also used as the description when someone bookmarks your site. Make sure it is short and to the point. Use your company name and a few additional words.
• Keywords — these are the words or combinations of words you expect people to use in a web search. Use industry buzz words, product names, city or state names and descriptive words. Anything you think someone would use to find your product or service.
• Description —Search engines display this sentence when your website appears as a result of a keyword search. So, every word counts. Make your point with as few word as you can to draw the viewer into your site.

Great information may not help you as much as bad information will hurt you. Review your information and make changes to better reflect your organization. You want to be selected, but first you have to be found. Linking to other websites helps.

Spiders and crawlers follow the links they find on web pages to find other pages. Expand your exposure by exchanging links with other websites. Links makes a website a powerful marketing and communications tool. But, a website with broken links that bring back a "page not found" messages, don’t help you or your visitor.

Check the links on your page to make sure they are still working. Get links to other’s sites and have them link to yours. Link often. It’s a big web out there and you want people find you.