As I sit here at my desk, I wonder how the marketing world has come to this point. Whether you are a newbie to the web, or your company is a seasoned online business, the hotword is SEO. Are you tired of hearing that yet? You shouldn't be, because it may make a difference between being found and never launching. Search Engine Optimization, generally referred to as SEO, is how you optimize content on the web to help Google and other search engines find you. This optimization is not limited to just your web site, though that is a big key, but a coordination of web content that emphasizes the relavance of your site on the web.

So why does this matter? First off, fewer than 20% of American's under the age of 50 use phone books, they generally look online first.  Lets say I am looking for a dentist in Waupun, I search Google for dentist in waupun and find 971,000 results. I am not scanning all of those pages, in fact, 70% of people will click on the top three results. Guess what, the first 2 results are real links to a dentist's web page, the rest of the next 3 pages are all directory listings. These are useful, but if I actually want to find your site, it will never happen. As far as I know there are only 2 dentists in town. Of course I know better, but it illustrates what a difference SEO can make.

So what factors in SEO ranking? There are a lot of possible variations, but site structure has a lot to do with it. First off, you need to own your own domain, web communities addresses such as yahoo.com/mybusiness are fine for listing services, but Google is giving all of the credit to Yahoo and not your web site. In the long run you are hinging the success of your web site on another company. What happens if you decide to use a different service? You lose your traction.

The moral is not that business owners cannot build their own site, I strongly encourage people to learn new skills and broaden their horizons. But if you want real results and wish to be competitive do it right. Stay away from fly-by-night companies and anyone that promises you a number 1 listing (this will cause serious problems for your down the road and you will regret it). Obviously, we offer this at dh Multimedia, but there are other resources you can use as well. The ultimate goal is proper placement of your site and when I search for bananas, I don't find peaches instead.

If you have any questions about my article, please feel free to contact Heath Benedum directly at heath@dhmultimedia.com