You may have asked yourself whether you truly need SEO (search engine optimization) on your website. What you should be asking yourself is whether or not you want people to visit your site. Of course, the answer is yes. You want your website to have traffic from people who are interested in the product or service you are offering, and you want that traffic to be constant, bringing new visitors to your site each day.

If you want your site to experience growth and popularity, yes, you do need SEO. You cannot take for granted that people will be able to find you in the vast sea of the Internet without you doing something to reach out to them. They want to find you and buy what you're selling, but if you don't stand out you'll blend into the background. They'll never find your site without some basic search engine optimization. SEO allows your company website to stand out amongst the pack so your products and services are highlighted for your target audience and potential customer base.

What SEO does for your website is what product placement does for a brand in a grocery store. Think of your website as a box of cereal. Where on the grocery store shelf would you like your cereal placed? Well, if your cereal were geared toward children, you most likely wouldn't want it behind the corn flakes on the top shelf. You want your children's cereal prominently displayed on the lower shelves - the perfect height for children to see. You've got the funny cartoon character on the box, but it would do no good being on behind the adult cereals on the upper level - out of reach of your target customer.

When you think about websites being placed on a virtual shelf, where do you want yours? Search Engine Optimization places your website on the most accessible shelf for your customers so they can find it easily - and find it first. There are millions upon millions of websites (and billions of web pages). However, if you run a search in Google, you are presented with a page of ten websites that match your criteria. Think about your Google searching habits. How often do you search for something and explore past the first page of results? Sometimes? How often do you go past the 3rd page? Probably never. So how do those first ten results get to be first amongst the millions? SEO.

The answer to your question can't be any clearer: Yes, you need search engine optimization if you want a website that receives a constant stream of highly-targeted traffic. The traffic can translate into products or services sold, which equals dollars in your pocket. It is important to remember that SEO and good design go hand in hand, so make sure your website is optimally structured so once the visitor is at your site, he or she can easily find what they are looking for.
By Bill Abernathy