If your website isn't generating you leads, you need to ask yourself what's wrong. If you're using a templated site, that may be the cause of the problem. Search the Internet yourself to find out which small businesses like your own are ranked at the top in different cities. How many of them are using a templated site? My guess is not many.

Internet buyers and smart consumers have become a tech-savvy group. They've seen every type of small business website imaginable. When they hit a site that's obviously built on a template, they know it right away. Internet searchers have seen enough templated websites to know that such sites don't offer the personal attention they're looking for in your field.

Your templated sight isn't generating leads because it doesn't add anything of value to customers' lives. Having pretty pictures on your site isn't going to drive you more business. How will your business fulfill all of your prospective clients' needs?What will you do that none of your competitors can or will do? It is necessary to answer all of these questions in your website and make them ask for more.

In a search engine world dominated by Google, one principal has become clear: Content Is King. The search engines regularly crawl through every website to see if there have been any changes since the last time they visited. If your site has added content since the last visit, you will be noticed as someone who has not let your site go dormant and seem abandoned. If your site is templated with templated copy that is exactly the same as a lot of other sites with only the contact information being different, you will all be given lesser value for being duplicates.

This principal of search engines ignoring duplicated websites is especially true for affiliate websites where you are given a specific ID number to track your traffic, but with everything else exactly the same, no one ever has a chance of being found by potential clients that you have not personally directed to your site.

Regularly updated content that is rich with keywords relevant to what your site is about is important for showing the search engines that you are an important source of timely information which they rate as very important. When your website is constantly updated, prospective clients know that it's not just a templated site. They will see that you are putting an effort into putting your best web-face forward, which is the key to marketing and sales strategies today.

The majority of today's consumers begin their searches on the Internet. If a website is difficult to navigate, or if visitors don't find their answers within the first few seconds of hitting a site, they'll leave as fast as they came. It must be click-click-click easy because you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression. Your small business website has to be a place that visitors want to come back to. A place where they know they can find information to help them achieve their goals. A place where you can build strong relationships with prospects and clients. The best way to create such a place is with a personalized website that puts a human face on your business.

Brett Miller, the founder of HoopJumper WebSystems, is the creator of Webepreneur, an easy-to-use website building program for small business owners and individual service professionals who want to save money and time by building and editing their own search engine optimized Web 2.0 websites. If you're a Small Business Owner and you want your websites to work for you, go to http://www.webepreneur.com/