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Small business owners typically ponder the question of whether or not to keep and maintain a website, and whether or not it will actually give a good return on their investment.  It's an honest question, and one that many web designers will avoid. The correct answer is "it depends". Be wary of any designer that just wants to make a sale.  A website for an attorney is a special challenge, because attorneys are selling a service as opposed to a tangible product.  Many web designers want to make a flashy and "cool" site, because that makes the web designer look good. The flashy site is something the designers can show off to their colleagues, but often the real needs of the client are ignored. This often leads to a situation where the client has a site that does not meet their needs, and therefore is difficult to maintain. This does not provide any benefit to the client.

A well designed website will help your users easily find what they are looking for and will make your business look professional. Designing a website from the beginning with Search Engines and your users in mind will help your website to be a success. Here are some practical tips and examples:

Many of my clients have asked me if I know of a quick, easy, inexpensive way to get to the top of the search engines. The answer I give them is always this - there isn't one. If there were, everyone would be doing it and then it would be worth nothing! Getting a good ranking in the search engines is hard work and takes time, and there is no easy way of going around that.

The people who write the search engine 'bots want to accomplish just one thing - they want their users to have relevant, useful results when they search for something. They don't want sites advertising little blue pills to come up when their users search for "Real Estate", just as you don't want your real estate site to come up when the user searches for "Britney Spears Naked XXX"!