Lets talk about search engine optimization. Most businesses are still completely missing the boat when it comes to using the power of the internet to generate sales leads. Today the opportunity for even small business to capitalize on this opportunity is really quite remarkable. Weve worked with a number of small companies that are small regional businesses that have propelled themselves to the top of the internet search engines through good search engine optimizations and sound pay per click campaign advertising practices. Even if youre a small company it doesnt mean that you cant get online visibility. A lot of business owners still havent woken up to this fact. The fact is, 85% of all business buyers today go first to an internet search engine in order to look for a vendor or provider of services for products, instead of going to traditional advertising yellow pages and other sources. So if your company hasnt got an internet strategy, a strategy for search engine optimization and getting visibility on line, youre really missing a huge opportunity and youre missing the vast majority of your potential market.

Its not difficult to implement world class search engine optimization and pay per click campaign strategies even if your company is very small. Its also not necessary to be an online company with ecommerce as its sole focus or even its focus at all in order to capitalize on the power of the internet. Only a fraction of the number of internet advertisers who are benefiting from a strong web presence are actually engaged in ecommerce activity, in other words, on line sales. What they DO do is they generate their leads on line because its been proven time and time again that only a small fraction of actual buyers are going to shop on line. What theyre doing is going to find business sources on line. So therein lies the opportunity. Weve worked with a myriad of small and medium sized companies to dramatically boost their internet search engine presence. In fact, some of our clients are right at the top of the internet for their organic search terms that are applied to their business. One example is a health care service company based in Portland, Oregon which now has a dominate position in its category on the internet while only having twelve employees. This kind of opportunity can be put to work for any business, and with the right work and attention to search engine optimization can take any company to the top of the web. It doesnt cost an arm and a leg to do good pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. In fact, the cost of deploying an initial search engine optimization program is a fraction of what a company would normally pay for advertising.

What are the benefits? First, with the right internet advertising and search engine optimization, a company can gain on line visibility thats largely disproportion to its actual company size versus the size of its competition. That means that even the smallest company, by engaging is sound SEO practices, can actually get an incredible amount of visibility that far exceeds their size or the ability to compete, through traditional sales and marketing channels. Second of all, search engine optimization, when done right with pay per click and done right with landing pages that are focused on offers related to key words that your buyers are searching for, can actually generate a large number of lead conversions. When were talking about lead conversions, were talking about people going to your web site, seeing an offer that is in line with what theyre searching for, such as a free trial or free guide or something of value, filling out a web form, a very brief one, and giving you their contact information in exchange for being signed up for the offer. This is a prime way for capturing and generating leads that you can continue to nurture either through sales activities or through marketing activities such as e newsletters.

So, when companies today think, well, search engine optimization doesnt apply to our business, Im here to say that theyre just dead wrong. Virtually any business today can benefit from search engine optimization. You dont have to be an online business. You dont have to be a technology business. You dont have to be a company that is only focused on internet sales. Any company can benefit from search engine optimization. And all companies that are not taking advantage of this opportunity are really doing themselves a disservice in leaving themselves succeptable to competitors who are following an aggressive approach.

Part of the issue with search engine optimization is that many business owners, CEOs and vice presents of sales and marketing actually were not educated on the power of internet marketing. Its almost a generational thing. Business owners whove come up through the traditional school of thought and been educated on sound marketing principals still look at advertising, trade shows and other traditional vehicles for generating sales leads. Many of those different traditional marketing programs are being eroded by the power of internet marketing. The cost per lead for internet marking is substantially lower than it is for tradition trade shows and advertising. The cost per mil in terms of exposure for your company and brand awareness is also much lower using search engine optimization and pay per click than it is using traditional media. In addition, in many cases search engine optimization gets you focused much more on targeting buyers, those who are actually interested in your product or service, as opposed to all potential buyers of all products and services, a small subset of which actually may be interested in your company and what it has to offer because search engines provide users of the internet with contextual search.

It allows you to focus in on key words that are only those typed by your potential buyers, which means that a searcher who is using those key words in order to find your product or service is much more valuable because you get a much higher density of searchers who are actually looking for your product or service versus trying to target a particular demographic though mass media advertising. So if your company isnt involved in search engine optimization today, if you dont have a strategy for SEO and havent made a commitment to go forward with this program, you should consider it strongly, as one of your first new years resolutions for 2006.