All of these factors contribute to the marks your website scores with Google’s crawlers, which in turn determines whether you achieve the Holy Grail of a Page 1 listing for your website in your chosen search field.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has always been important, even when it was primarily concerned with the number of words per sentence and the repetition of metadata, but it is even more important now that Google has changed the criteria to allocate more weighting to the quality of the content on your website and the number of back-links.

This means your website had better be top notch if you want Google to recommend it to potential visitors.

There are many different programmes for building websites, but we use WordPress, which has two distinct advantages – it’s free to use, which is always handy, and it’s good enough for CNN, who probably post more stuff on their website in an hour than we do in a month.

So you know it’s not going to run out of bandwidth.

From a technical point of view, your website should be SEOptimised, be quick to load and easy to navigate. But it should also contain all the information your visitor might be looking for, presented in an interesting and informative package.

This is not the task for an amateur and, considering how vital your website is to you, it should be treated like a motor vehicle – purchased from a reputable organization, cleaned regularly and given a major service every so often.

If you follow those rules, it should last you for many years.