Today our need for knowledge, information, everyday necessities and novelties can be found with a few simple clicks of our computer mouse. It’s no surprise that people prefer to surf the internet rather than go to a library or shopping center to look for or buy what they want. More and more people use search engines like Google to help them go directly to the website that contains what they need.

It is the search engines that bring your website to the forefront of  potential clients. When a topic/keyword is searched for, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first. Remember that a prospective client will probably only look at the first page in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Surveys show that when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways:

• through a search engine
• by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested
• reading an article
• by hearing about it from a friend

The most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90% of online users. Only 10% of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

The first result that comes out of a search engine is usually the website that contains the most similar number of keywords in the exact same order as the search. To be able to fully utilize your website’s potential as a top search result item, you need to orient your website towards the product or service you want to promote. If you cannot have the .com name, you can rely on keyword optimization to help you with your search engine rankings.

You do not need to consult a search engine specialist to tell you which keywords to use. All you have to do is think about your product or service and how you would search for it on the internet using a search engine. Keywords will not work for you if you keep them generic. Most people log onto the internet already knowing what they need or want. They will use this idea as their search string for what they are looking for.