Businesses are more likely to compel website visitors who are looking for its services, products, or solutions, than having the sales force knock at their door when they are busy. The small business website can be the mouth of your sales funnel.

WHAT IS IT: The goal of search engine optimization, also know as seo, is to get a website or a web page in front of an internet user via the results page generated from a search query. For example, if a search engine optimization professional wanted to have his or her page appear in the results page of google when a user typed "small business search engine optimization los angeles," he or she would follow certain steps in order to achieve this: keyword research to figure the terms that internet users type when they are looking for this service; web design that is search engine optimized from the ground up; maintain a blog with fresh, insightful, and relevant discussion about the topics relating to search engine optimization; and getting back links to the website from other reputable and relevant websites. The concerted efforts to get the search engines to include the professional's website in the results page would continue after it appeared in the first page of google, yahoo, bing or any other search engine.

WHY: The benefit of appearing in the first page of the search results of internet users is to generate traffic to the website. Once the visitor lands in the website he or she are potential customers. A real goal is to generate leads from this visitors. After all , they were searching for information, products, services, or solutions. Beginning a conversation with a person who filled a form of his or her own volition is quite different than grabbing the phone book.

BENEFITS: Since the nature of search engine results is that real people are looking for information, services, products, or solutions, we believe that the website can be a powerful marketing tool. Ideally, appearing in front of those who are specifically searching for a product, service, or solution, reduces the cost of acquiring a new client. Search engine traffic coming to the small business website is equals powerful market research. When an internet user chooses the website from amongst the many results, the website can gather the query the visitor typed when he or she performed a search. Intelligent organizations use this information to better understand their audience and how they come across. Search engine efforts are cumulative, and although steps to stay a top must be continuously implemented, the work that has been rightly done counts towards the relevancy of the website.

COSTS: Search engine optimization efforts are time consuming and never ending. Just as any ecosystem requires constant effort for survival, staying a top of the search results requires staying up to date and implementing new search engines guidelines, and seo tactics. As the internet gains relevancy in our lives, so does the complexity and specialization of online marketing. In the near future, most medium and large size organizations will require at least one in house professional.

BOTTOM LINE: The search engine optimization can be granular; ultimately, seo is strongly related to old marketing theories and practices: targeting, profiling, and segmentation are the guiding principles. Small business looking to widen their customer base, medium size and large companies looking to maintain their customer base, and independent professionals looking to sell their specialized services need search engine optimization services and friendly search engine web design. Unless these are ready to give up their primary functions to undertake the task for themselves, it is best to outsource search engine optimization.