It is the age-old dilemma of businesses both big and small. How does it attract the attention of potential customers that are out there? It has these amazing products or services to offer, if only it could get the customers in the door, or more likely these days ? if only it could get them to visit their website.

This leads to the question: How good is your website? To answer this question you will need to answer some more questions:

1.How high up does the website rank in major search engine listings? Most searchers looking for information do not go beyond the first page of search engine listings.

2.Does it attract the right kind of traffic to the website? You want searchers with a genuine interest in your product/service to visit your website.

3.Do you know how effective your website is ? in terms of generating leads? It is no good having thousands of ?hits? on your website if it does not translate into leads.

If these questions have left you feeling confused, you need to engage the services of a professional search engine marketing firm or Internet marketing consultants. They offer what is known as ?search engine optimisation?, which are clever strategies that are implemented in the designing of the website.

Search engine optimisation would involve a proper evaluation of the website so as to make it more ?search engine friendly? and user friendly. It is achieved chiefly through editing text on the website to include strategically placed ?keywords? to move it up search engine listings, the use of links from other relevant websites, forums and free directories and well written and designed content to help users navigate the site easily. The advice is to never lose sight of the end user. Small and medium sized businesses, interested in local traffic, could also go in for something called local search engine optimisation to help search engines categorize websites to attract customers in the local area. This can be achieved through the use of meta tags and geo tags.

A Search engine marketing company may also offer tools that are designed to track interest generated through the website; this helps to assess the success of otherwise of the site and also helps further tailor the site to meet the needs of the end user.

Compared to other forms of marketing, Internet marketing is well within the reach of most companies ? especially of small and medium sized companies. And with search engine optimisation, your new look website will be a valuable source of additional revenue.