Once you have created a website, uploaded it to a web server and the domains have been set up and correctly resolved, it is important to tell the world that the new site exists. Don't expect a million visitors on the first day! Your new site, however well designed, is just one of many millions already on the web and it will take some time to build a following or customer base.

The search engines are obviously important because it is by searching through Google, Yahoo or one of the hundreds of other search engines that most users initially find your site. Google and Yahoo are important because they are widely used, so aim to get realistically high rankings with these two and you will probably get reasonably good rankings elsewhere as well.

There are numerous ways in which your new domain name can be submitted to the search engines. There are free services on the web that will do this for you, and there are much better professional services that can be used in return for a fee or annual subscription. However, there are also quite a few things you can do to your own website that may improve your search engine rankings. It is not the intention of this article to explain the black art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as there are hundreds of websites that already address the subject. Suffice it to say that you should read some of the information available on SEO and apply the recommended techniques to your own site wherever possible.

Key considerations are keeping the content of the site relevant and up to date. Articles that have not been updated for months or years may be regarded as less relevant and hence ignored when your site is spidered (indexed by a search engine). Using well-chosen keywords and tags in every page may also help in the case of at least some search engines. Using Flash may seem a good idea as it allows visually appealing elements to be created, but Flash may also cause some problems. Some search engines now index Flash pages but others do not, and Flash elements may not work on some computers or tablets - such as the Ipad. In the case of the Joomla CMS, it is possible to select the option of SEO-friendly URLs. This makes the internal URLs used to link all the website pages more digestible for search engines.

Dozens of other small changes made to a website can add up to significant improvements in search-engine rankings, so put in the work, ideally as the pages are created, if you are serious about bringing large numbers of visitors to your site. It may also be worth mentioning the use of social media as a way of attracting people to your site. Facebook, Twitter and other well known sites can all be used to raise visibility.