Central to the whole issue of publishing information on the Internet is the concept of "visibility" of your Web page, or site. Contrary to the opinions of some, it's not enough to have a visually appealing site. Nor is it sufficient to create content which is accessible to the huge variety of browsing situations, and easy to navigate once you're there.

Important as all these elements are, they won't matter at all unless you receive visitors.

I certainly don't have a handle on the whole picture, but I can try to state the case as I see it, which is mostly from the point of view of a commercial presence.

There are several ways that a website can be reached on the Internet, including:

1. via the site's Web Address (AKA its "Uniform Resource Locator", or URL)
2. using one of the many Search Tools
3. "stumbling" across a site, perhaps by following a link from another page, an email signature, or a posting in a UseNet newsgroup

Locating a Website using its URL

This is by far the most certain way to find a specific website. It's one of the reasons why businesses should publicize their URL (and email address) as widely as possible, by including it on all their existing publicity materials, letterheads, business cards and so on.

It does have its own difficulties, including:

• it relies on knowing the address in the first place!
• long URLs are hard to remember (which is one reason why we chose to use "tne.co.uk" as one of our main addresses)
• the lack of computer literacy on the part of users (saying "just enter this URL into your web browser" usually comes out making as much sense as saying "your hovercraft is full of eels").
• typographical errors ending in "404" (not found) errors:
• Unusual characters in URLs:
• the tilde '~' is commonly mistaken for the hyphen '-', and is hard to find on some keyboards
• the forward slash '/' is not in most people's vocabulary
• simple errors such as character transposition

There's also the problem that newcomers to the 'Net, being unfamiliar with how a web browser works, often make the mistake of entering a web address into a search engine's enquiry field instead of into the 'address' (MSIE) or 'location' (Netscape Navigator) bar.

I have always found it ironic that although the Internet can speed up communications, making the initial contact is ridiculously hard (I'm sure you must have tried to tell someone what your email address is over the 'phone... and found how difficult it is to achieve).

Using Search Tools

People generally talk about "Search Engines", but I prefer the more generic "Search Tools", since a Search Engine (such as Alta Vista or Excite) is very different from a Web Directory (like Yahoo!). Using the latter has a more familiar 'feel', but it does require that you know how the directory is structured. Finding a specific site in a directory can be a matter of hit-and-miss, if the site has been classified in a different way to that which the seeker expects.

Although they are apparently simpler to use than Web directories, it can also be extremely difficult to locate a particular Website using search engines. The main reason for this is that search engines can only index Web pages according to their textual content, and the person using the search engine cannot know with any certainty what that content is. If the name of the company or its main product line is unique, there is a reasonable chance of finding it - if it's listed in that search engine at all (which is another can of worms of an entirely different colo[u]r).

However, most people using search tools aren't necessarily trying to find a particular product. It's more likely that they're looking for more general solutions to their specific problem, whatever that might be. They may even be trying to find alternative solutions to a problem that has already been solved in one way - perhaps using the product which has been most successfully marketed using conventional advertising media!

As many relevant words ("keywords") as possible must be used in each page to increase its chance of being offered high up in a search engine's results. To do this, the page designer needs to try to think like a potential 'customer' of a page - and that means asking such questions as:

• What words is this page's audience likely to use to find this material (whether they know it's here or not!)?
• What synonyms are there of these words?
• Are there any ways in which these words are commonly mis-spelt?

'Stumbling' across a Website

There are those who use the Internet for serious purposes, and others who use it for 'entertainment'. The latter type are what I think of as a "surfer": someone who is just following links from one page to another, just seeing what they can find. Of course, the chances of stumbling upon a specific site in the course of such surfing is extremely remote.

However, the chance is still there, and since, unlike conventional adverts, once a site is up it's there at any time for anyone to see, over time a number of people will stumble across a site.

Some surfers will be interested in the subject and will stay, others won't, and will hit their 'back' button and go elsewhere. C'est la vie :)

The only thing one can do to improve one's chances of being stumbled upon is by having links TO your pages from other sites. This is the most difficult part of publicising a website for a business, since there is a natural tendency on the part of the site owner to want to try to keep visitors on the site once they're there. The concept of linking AWAY from their own site to another's isn't relished, but if that reluctance could be overcome then each site would on average have far more links TO it... ah, for a perfect world :)

The end result of this impasse is that one has to try to arrange 'Reciprocal Link Agreements' between sites who want to link to one another - if only to check that the URL being linked to is valid (and will be valid for some time). A certain amount of "I won't link to him unless he links to me first" mentality exists too, unfortunately.

Although perhaps more suited to non-commercial sites, another alternative to direct links between sites is to join a WebRing - a linked list of sites belonging to a theme.

Above all, it's important to realize that the majority of visitors to the average website are going to find it by using search tools. This being the case, it's vital to ensure that the content makes sense not just to the target audience, but to the search tools themselves, so that they can index the site correctly.

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