We all know that the real purpose of a web site is to create sales or leads for your product or service and anything else is a waste of your time and marketing allowance.

When people search or browse the Internet, they look at the companies that come up high in a page of search results as the #1 players in that arena.

Excellent website marketing means your site will show up on page 1 for many keywords in your trade. This shapes your name recognition, raises your brand value and brings you increased web traffic.

Nonetheless, there's a catch. You have to get them to your site. You could have the best web site design and well written, and you're confident that folks will love it. But will they?

Since 84% of all website traffic comes through the search engines, it is important to make your website as search engine friendly as possible. You should be on page 1 of results for the keyword or phrase that describes your business. 87% of the business from a search query goes to the companies who are listed in the top 5 of the first page search results.

Most of your customers have never heard of you and have no idea that you exist, let alone your web site/address. There are currently billions of websites and growing regularly.

Everyone else has the same idea you have, build a web site and people will come. Yeah-Right! How are those customers with money to spend going to find you?

The answer is search engines-the online tool that permits users to quickly find almost anything on the Web. By choosing keywords (words or phrases a user will enter into a search engine in order to find a web site) the users find the information they are looking for. So your site should have keywords.

Most people (your prospects/customers/fans) use a search engine to look for products or services. The search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc) use "spiders" - a computer robot program that scans the web searching for info that is then updated/added to their search engine database.

Spiders are at times called "knowledge-bots" or knowbots. The web is so large that it can take five to seven months for a spider to find your site.

Once you build your web site you have a few choices in terms of getting traffic to your site:

1. Do nada and hope & pray people will find you. Most of your competitors are following this device-so you could totally get the jump on them by doing something.

2. Pay per click. This is a method of search marketing where advertisers (sellers) pay a certain amount every time their ad is clicked by a prospect. Although, searchers click on sponsored listings only 29% of the time.

3.Optimize your site. Optimize is "to make the most perfect or modify to achieve maximum efficiency." The purpose is to build your web site's search visibility and conversion rate and to generate more leads and sales.

They call it "positioning" - this is the process of designing, writing and programming a web site using specific keywords so that search engine ranks your site high in the results. Search Engine Positioning helps your website get listed by the search engine so that people looking for your product/merchandise or service can find you. When a visitor lands on your website, your homepage should be easy to use. It should be relevant to their keywords and search term. The majority of websites lose 72% of their traffic right off the home page. Your website is a crucial tool in your marketing and PR campaign-your online face to the world. Please keep in mind that even a perfect website is no use at all if it isn't found and seen by the right audience.

The point is... your prospects/customers/fans can't buy what they can't find. Let's try to make it easy for them by optimizing your web site.

Are you ready to be on page 1 of Google & Yahoo? Get your site optimized with the Keywords in your industry.