Getting found on the internet has become a major challenge. Pet theories abound on how to persuade the search engines to list your site above it's competitors and a complete industry – search engine optimisation – has grown up. Like so much of the web, search engine optimisation or SEO as it has become known, has become a breeding ground for charlatans, crooks, rank amateurs and a very small number of professional, ethical companies.

Search engine listings are incredibly important and no site should be considered complete until everything possible has been done to attain good search results.

This begins with considered design. Toad sites are designed to be inherently search engine-friendly. You'll find minimal use of frames and Flash – both pretty well impenetrable to search engines.

You'll usually find plenty of legible text – people like to find plentiful information and so do search engine spiders. But to obtain high listings for the most relevant key phrases for your industry you need specialist help. And by specialist that's what we mean. Successful SEO is based on exhaustive research and development and constant hands-on experience of the latest changes in the rules. We've proved to ourselves that no company can provide search engine management as a sideline; it has to be the whole business. So our SEO is handled by our sister company XSEO. XSEO is based in premises right alongside Toad, so site development and optimisation can go hand in hand for the best possible results. Unlike most of its competitors, XSEO operates an open book approach to its services, preferring its clients to understand exactly what's being done for them. This extends so far as to publish detailed do-it-yourself tutorials to de-mystify what is widely regarded as a black art.