It is estimated by 2012, the Internet will be the world's dominant advertising medium. Businesses of all sizes are having websites built at a record pace. But, anyone considering building a website needs to answer one very important question: how am I going to get people to the website? The "Field of Dreams" idea "Build it and they will come" does not work. If you do not have a well thought-out plan, then the website will be built backwards and be lost in Cyber Space.

The traditional forms of advertising - TV, Radio and Direct Mail, now called intrusive advertising, are giving way to a much more efficient and cost effective means of advertising... "Invitational Advertising." For example, on Google there are three-quarters of a billion search results provided everyday. These results are for individuals who are searching for your products or services. You see, it is no longer necessary to try to find people who are interested in what you offer, because they are trying to find you!

It is true that if someone searches on the specific name of a company they will probably find the company's website. However, most people do not do their searches this way. Instead, they use search words or phrases called "keywords," and all keywords are "measured" by search engines, like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

For example, if someone is looking for a plumber in their area, they can use their town as a way to narrow the search to a local plumber. On Google, there are 364,000 records for the search term "plumber." When you narrow the search to "Bradenton plumbers," the number drops to 87200 records, and if you narrow it down even further to "Bradenton, Florida plumbers," you get down to 12,200 records.

Local Search Engine Marketing is one of the most important things you can do to promote your business. You need to reach local customers, so designing your site to be SEO friendly and focused on getting you to a top position on locally targeted searches will help you grow your business.

If you know what people are searching for, all you have to do is to tell them you have what they are looking for, invite them in, and whammy you now have a steady stream of customers. Pretty simple isn't it? Well... not so fast, if they can't find your website, how are you going to let them know you have what they are looking for?

Enter the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the process of designing a website that is search engine friendly and incorporates the best practices as outlined by the Search Engine Companies to achieve a high ranking and visibility.

Click here for the First Step.