One question every website owner should ask, but rarely does, is: How will my target audience find me?

When all is said and done, and your website is published on the Internet for all to see, who will find it? How will they know you are out there? Many owners rely on the many thousands of search engines to find them and point Internet users to them. Unforortunately, most sites do not have the things that will make them visible, and searchable, to search engines (like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Dogpile) as well as the Metasearch, or Metacrawler sites (those which use several engines to search, like AlltheWeb, Webcrawler, and others). Those two things are: keywords (what people use to find you) and links (the ways or paths to get to you from wherever they are, in the Internet).

Yes, it sounds awfully simplistic, and you are correct, but the fact is with these two pieces of the puzzle in the right place, your website stands a fighting chance of being your best marketing tool.

Let's talk about keywords for example, and what search engine optimization (SEO) is and is NOT. SEO is not about simply studying keywords. The professional SEO uses the tools available to expand on the client's idea of what keywords would best describe the business. Focusing on your business from a more conceptual, "big picture" point of view, I take a step back, if you will, and engage my "peripheral vision" to understand your business, what you want to tell others about you, and what your target audience really use to find you. This service alone helps to set me apart from others in my field. This peripheral view understanding takes partnering with you and brainstorming with you to think about how your site attracts visitors and, more importantly, how your site's features and content inspire your visitors to act, resulting in converting them from onlookers and browsers into customers!

My main goal for you is simply this: To transform your Internet presence from being just another one of many in your industry to being the leader in your field. Now, no self-respecting, honest SEO professional will, or should, promise that he or she will make you number one in ANY particular Search engine. But what I can and must do is to position your website so that it is easy to find, and, more important, provides the greatest potential for providing you a return on your investment. That means customers! Being on the first page doesn't put money in your pocket, at the end of the day, when you put a fine point on it. Converting a visitor into a customer (or better, into a repeat customer) does.