The search engines can bring huge amounts of traffic to our sites. In the past, it has been possible to build pages specifically for the benefit of the search engines so that the site would rank high when surfers were searching for a particular subject. Those days are fast disappearing, the modern search engines are more interested in two particular aspects of a web site.

The first is that the whole site should convey a theme throughout the pages, in our particular case that's fishing in all its various flavours.

The other aspect that is becoming more and more important is that of link popularity. Search engines rate highly any sites that have lots of links to them, believing that any site with lots of links to it must be a good and interesting site. It is even better if the linking sites are on a similar subject, in other words if 20 fishing sites link to your fishing site, then it's better than if 20 motor sport sites link to your fishing site. Once again it's all down to themes, and the search engine's desire to give the surfer the best possible content to match the search terms entered.

Luckily, it's not all doom and gloom. The search engines are still one of the few places where the 'one man band' can compete with the giants of industry and commerce, and still come out on top. A well designed web site, with plenty of relevant links from other sites, can still be top of the search engine listings....it just takes some effort on our part !!.