A common misconception is this. You type in your business name into the search box in Google and your website comes up first. This is great, and you go on your way thinking that Google has seen your website and so will your customers. What about all the other people who don't know your business name? What are they searching for? If you type in your product or service where do you come up? Is your website showing up in the top results? Is it there on the first page at all?

Research is telling us that over 85% of people are using the internet to tell them about local products and services. They use the Google, Yahoo, and Bing more than they use the yellow pages. Small to medium sized businesses need to make changes to the way their website is presented in order to make the most of this new trend. Optimizing your website for the search engines will give you a competitive advantage over the other similar businesses in your area.

People are generally looking for a product or service in their local area. These people search for the product name not your business name. After all they want to see what is available and make a decision to contact you or your competition based on the information available on your website. It is also likely that they do not understand how the internet works and so they will assume that the best company will appear in the search results first. It can help your business to show up in the search engine results before your competitors. It is likely that your competitors haven't heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) either and so this is your opportunity to get ahead.

Another misconception is that your website designer or programmer is responsible for optimizing your website. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is such a complicated science that it would be quite a challenge to be a great artist and designer as well as keep up with the latest SEO techniques and methodologies. SEO consultants usually work full time on optimizing websites. SEO consultants are specialized at understanding traffic generation methods. It is not a graphic designer's job to get traffic to your website; they are hired to design and build the website. This is why the majority of websites are not yet optimized for the search engines, a fact that you can take advantage of.

There are many different facets of optimizing your site. Some need to occur on the website itself; others will occur outside of the website on the internet. All of these methods are proven to work to improve your search engine rankings. They are all methods that are approved and recommended by the search engines. It is important to be wary of any schemes or companies that are offering to do large amounts of submissions for small amounts of money. These scams can have your website banned from the search engines all together.