Lots of you on here put your web sites at the bottom of your posts and i often click on the link to have a nosey, some of the sites and the content are very, very good and very proffessional. Once i have browsed the site i then go onto Google or Yell .com and search for the same driving school or instructor to see how high they are on the listings but the site very seldom comes up. Why is this? is not the idea of a web site to promote yourself and gain custom? if so how do you gain custom if your web site does not show on the search engines. For example, i was looking at a site earlier in the Bristol area, (i will not mention the name, but it was very simple and to the point) so i then went into google and searched for lessons in Bristol, the web site did not come up. Anyone shed any light please

If you do find out, let me know, because i havent got a clue either!

Put simply, web sites need to be appealing to both human visitors and search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing etc)!

There's no point having a web site that is not designed with search engines in mind - a website can be as pretty as you like, but if it is not appealing to search engines it is effectively invisible and in effect useless for it's purpose.

Search Engine Optimisation is a BIG subject and there are numerous factors involved - I have numerous websites, webpages and blogs and can drone on about it for hours but I don't want to bore you (but I will if you want me to expand on what's involved )

It is important to bear in mind how people search.

I mean "driving lessons in London" for example will cost you a lot to feature first page unless you really know what you are doing.

You need to know what your potential customers are looking for and whilst a simple Google search is a common source of client, it is not the only one - there are other ways to get your business out there.

Yes you're absolutely right...and that's why if "you really know what you're doing", you'd never optimise around the search term "driving lessons in London" as it's way too generalised and far too competitive

Come on then LL tell us more

please do, i have a site for my area, but is 121 in the google listings for my area.
so would love help to get to the top, or at least near.

I'm happy to...but bear in mind that SEO is a massive subject. I can give you an outline of what's involved but to go into it in any depth would take more time than I have available and would bore the pants off you I expect ....that said, SEO isn't rocket science and is perfectly do-able for driving instructors who have a basic grasp of how websites are written (you do need a bit of technical savvy!).

So, tell me what you'd like to know and what level you want me to pitch my explanation at and I'll oblige

Here are a few simple SEO tips (in no particular order):

1. Make sure your site is built with good code. "out of the box" products like Mr Site may have bloated code.
2. Use <title> and <description> tags in your code. Make sure each page has relevant tags but different ones for each page.
3. Use important search keywords in your tags. If you are a driving school in York then "Driving lessons York" would be good to include in there.
4. Use important keywords in the text on your pages, particularly the home page
5. Make sure your pages are linked to eachother using text links
6. Submit your site to Google and Bing
7. Get links to your site from other sites (this is a big topic, there are many different viewpoints on inbound links and some things to avoid - but in general most seo-ers would agree that inbound links are good.)
8. Don't go overboard with excessive and unnatural use of keywords.

That'll do for now - do all that and it will help.
PS - my own driving school (not in my sig on this forum) is no.1 in Google for searches for "driving school mytown" etc - although i have to admit it is a small town!