The Internet has become the source people turn to most often for news, product reviews and business information.

Think about the last time you needed to buy a certain product or wanted to look up a business phone number. Did you dig out the Yellow Pages? Pick up a newspaper? Of course not, you Google'd it!

Ever tried to find a business online only to realize they didn't have a website?

Or worse, the website they did have was not very useful, boring, confusing or slow to load?

What do people find when they look up your business on line? Google your business name and find out.

You can have a better Google ranking.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term that's tossed around a lot these days. In simple terms, it means designing your website to rise to the top of the search engine rankings. Part of this process is to research words people will use when searching for the products and services you are selling and then working those key words and phrases into the content and design of your web pages.

The search engines - Google, Yahoo! & Bing - scan the pages of your website looking for those key words so they can match your site with the people who are looking for it. The best matches are then ranked in descending order on the search engine results pages. The person who made the query gets a long list of websites to choose from. The more authoritative and relevant your website is for the search keywords, the higher it will rank on the search engine pages.

You may have heard of Black Hat SEO. These are SEO tricks used to fool the search engines. If you get caught, the consequences are serious. Yes, there are wrong reasons for Google to be interested in your website. Google does blacklist websites for using SEO tricks.

Are new customers finding your website through the search engines?

You need a fresh website.

Don't let your website get stale. This is one of the worst mistakes you can make with your website. The search engines love fresh, dynamic content. More importantly, your customers want to know that the information on your website is current. The quickest way to lose a customer is to greet them with outdated news on the home page. How do you feel when you visit a website and see something announced as 'Coming in July 2011!' If no one bothered to remove such an obviously dated announcement, how can you trust that anything else on their website is up to date?

Styles, colour preferences, trends and technology evolve over time. Websites built today have a very different look from those created five years ago, last year, even six months ago!

Can you edit your website easily or is it a chore that you put off? Are you comfortable uploading photos and creating links? Do you know how to add new pages to your website?

You need a mobile friendly website.

Mobile devices have exploded in popularity over the past few years. Estimates vary but as many as 35% of people now access the Internet exclusively through their phone or tablet. About 40% of all your website traffic will be on a mobile device. It's no longer enough to design a website that looks great and works well on a large screen, it has to function well on mobile devices, as well, or you risk losing the customer.

There are two ways to handle this issue:

1. Create separate websites for mobile devices and large screen computers.
2. Design a single website that recognizes that there are many visitors who use mobile devices and many who switch back and forth. These websites, commonly known as Responsive, reformat according to the size of the device being used so the content is always readable and functional.

Do users find that your website works just as well on their phones as on their desktop computers?

You can have a better website.

INM builds better websites.

At INM, we are SEO experts. There are dozens of factors that affect how well your website ranks on the search engines. We know how to create a website that the search engines will notice for all the right reasons.

Why is it important for your website to rank higher on the search engine pages? Chances are people won't look beyond the first two or three pages on Google before they either find what they are looking for or do another search. Ideally, you want to be on the first page of Google.

INM builds websites that also appeal to people, with stunning graphics and pictures, clean designs, professional copy writing, user-friendly apps and add-ons, blogs and videos. Having lots of website visitors doesn't do much good if they don't stick around long enough to turn into customers.

Along with optimizing your website content, we'll set you up with social media pages, online ad campaigns and links to bring in even more traffic.

We can't guarantee to put you at number one, but we can promise to help improve your rank on the search engines. Most importantly, we'll help drive more visitors and qualified leads to your business.

Every Industrial NetMedia website comes with Site Builder Tools (SBT), an easy to use web page editor. With SBT, you become the content manager for your own website! SBT makes it easy for absolutely anyone to edit their website, keep the content current, add and delete pictures, create links and add new pages.

Website add-ons such as blogs, message boards, newsletters and calendars are also administered through SBT.

SBT gives you control of your website, with password-only access. As a site administrator, you can add and delete users, as well as restricting users' access to certain areas of the website.