Establishing a web presence has become a must for a great percentage of small companies. Even at a local level many prospective customers prefer to look for products and services online instead of going through phone directories. The advantage is an immediate feedback and the availability of much more information compared to an address and phone number. Being found on the search is vital. If nobody can find your business you are missing on possibly a great number of customers.

Once you have a professionally looking site, make sure the name of what you are selling is reflected in the title and copy. For example, if you are providing pet sitting services in Tampa, do not name your site "Anne's Caring Touch". It does not describe what you do and the search engine will not return results if someone searches for pet sitting services in Tampa. Name the site "Anne's Pet Sitting Services - Tampa". Scatter these keywords throughout the site with good copy describing your company. Do not overdue it though. The search engines frown upon heavy word repetitions and will penalize sites as spammy.

Make sure you list your site with local directories and possibly DMOZ (Open Directory Project) and Yahoo!

If you are in a highly competitive area where many companies offer the same goods and services, one alternative is to use Pay Per Click (PPC) to be at the top of the search results. You apply to open an account, select the keywords and pay only when someone clicks on your listing. The advantage of PPC is immediate search engine positioning and a captive audience that has already searched for a particular item. The disadvantage is that a lot of people might just be browsing. They will click on the listing after a search and never buy. You still will be charged for the click. It is possible to optimize PPC. Take this example: You sell Red Widgets. Many people search for them but never buy. They click on your site and here goes the charge. You can instead only bid for "Buy Red Widgets" and "Red Widgets for Sale". Only people who search for these keyphrases will see your listing and you get "qualified" traffic.

This all sounds simple but it is surprising that many companies do not know how to manage PPC and waste a lot of money. In the end they get out of PPC because it brings a negative ROI. Natural search engine optimization takes time to become effective but once your site is high in the results you will not pay if someone clicks.

You can read more about PPC and search engine optimization on our website.

Fabio Braghi is a SEO specialist who owns Allpconline.com, a search engine optimization company