1) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - It's Only One Piece of the Puzzle

Having been one of the major search engines first customers a few years ago, it's been both amazing and amusing to see the growth of the SEO consulting industry. It still makes me chuckle when I hear someone telling me that they got "ripped off" by an SEO firm that "promised" them a first page ranking, and then months later - little to no results.

While there are quite a few very good SEO consulting firms, the truth is that the nature of search has become so competitive that no firm can guarantee results. That's due in large part to the fact that there is only one relevant page for most small businesses - the first page of a search engine ranking. And even in that page, the traffic of the #1 position can be 300% greater than the #2 position and 1000% greater than the #5 position.

So in reality, there are only a handful of positions for each valuable keyword or phrase in any given industry. If all anyone had to do to get in the top 5 was to hire an SEO firm - we would all be rich!

Because the search engines award your rankings in large part to how many other websites out in cyberspace link to your website, beyond just SEO, oftentimes now ranking is becoming an issue of having a) scale of site b) volumes of content, and c) links from category-related sites (which are also well indexed) to link to yours. This is best achieved over the long term with an ethical SEO strategy and a consistent investment into content and inbound links - but most of this falls on your shoulders, not the SEO firms!

* It may be easy for someone to rank you high in the search engines for "wholesale widgets in California" - but because it may not be a highly trafficked and targeted term, your seo efforts may be wasted getting ranked for a term that does not actually generate you any significant amount of leads or sales. Understanding which keywords are profitable and which ones are not worth pursuing is the first step in successful SEO.

2) Lead/Purchase Oriented Website

It is a fundamental component of any online business, but often the first critical mistake made by most small businesses is in their website. This does not mean you have to spend a lot of money on your site, but it does mean that whoever designs your online property should understand your lead generation or online sales goals - as well as getting to understand your customer. Inquire about a website-related need or get a fast-quote for one.

Ask the person building your website if they have built sites in your industry before, and more importantly, if they have ever sold a significant amount of product or service online. I would not recommend purchasing a site off an online template store or getting someone who is a pure graphic designer/web developer. Invest in a basic website that has the proper calls to action, uses the right verbiage to engage the visitor, offers free tools or information to encourage opt-in registrations, and place hot-buttons according to where the human eye tends to direct to on a page.

Also ask yourself, "Is my website to generate leads, or to generate online sales right through the site?" Not only will this dictate what kind of website design and layout you want, but also help determine what other features you may require within your site (customer log-in, online merchant account, PHP, security certificates, etc.)

3) Targeted PPC (Pay-per-Click)

The fact that only an estimated 5% of search engine advertisers use conversion code on their sales or lead confirmation pages (and even less have installed basic web analytics) means that there are still tremendous opportunities in many business verticals for small business owners who are smart, diligent, creative, and have a little bit of vision.

Pay-per-click ads on search engines allow your online store or lead generation site to be up and running instantly. The cost of pay-per-clicks ads can vary widely, but with practiced diligence, one can control daily spend with the search engines and turn quite a handy profit.

Successful execution of a pay-per-click campain does require some experience. Though the consoles for both Google and Yahoo are user friendly, there are numerous nuances and rules to advertising with the search engines (and they differ from company to company) so that your dollars are better spent getting the advice of an expert before actually launching your ads with your credit card. Far too often, I review someone's pay-per-click campaign to see that they have been needlessly spending money on terms they should not have bought, going national when they should have gone local (and wasting a huge amount of money every day!) using broad match instead of phrase or exact matching, getting jammed by their competitors and having their costs per click spike, not recognizing click spam or click fraud activity, etc.

Also, integrating your website to your CRM system (whether it be salesforce.com, ACT!, etc.) and installing a basic web analytics package is crucial to understanding which keywords to buy, and ultimately, which keywords you want to focus your seo efforts on!

4) Drip Email (for lead-based sites) or an Affiliate Program (for purchase-based sites)

Drip Email means that you have an email program that consistently reaches out into your database of leads your website generates, and then emails them special offers, news, or other incentives in accord with CanSpam guidelines. Efficiently having your website categorize and help store your leads as a database and then mining the database with an appealing message can bring a nice monthly boost to your bottom line each month - and with minimal effort!

An Affiliate program (on the web anyway) is often a two or three-dimensional multi-level marketing program that pays others for bringing traffic and /or sales to your website, whether that referrer be a current customer or a website with a link to yours. When executed and managed properly, an affiliate program can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for your website. However, most of the successful affiliate programs I have seen conducted through the Internet require training and/or some hand-holding of affiliates. A successful affiliate program often requires dedicated people just to manage and continue to incentivize their affiliates.

5) Site Analytics Leading to Increasing Efficiencies

People are unpredictable. No matter how well designed a website or pay-per-click campaign, people inexplicably behave in ways that we would not initially predict. That's why installing a basic web analytics package, tying your website to your leads database, and installing conversion counters on confirmation pages are critical to:

a) knowing where to invest more money

b) reducing cost per account or lead acquisition

c) increasing lead/sales count and conversion

d) understanding user behaviour

e) gaining product and services intelligence

6) Implementing Web 2.0 Beyond the Hype and Generic Buzzwords.

While there has been buzz aplenty about "Web 2.0" and what it means, the shift from the first generation of the web (if we refer to the "dot boom" as the first generation, or Web 1.0) to the second generation has been happening gradually over the last 5 years or so.

While Web 1.0 was about venture capital, expensively engineered software applications, and pricey domain names - Web 2.0 is, in part, about organic growth of small businesses that are eMarketing savvy, of the importance of search engine results over someone actually remembering a domain name to type into their address bar, and about the fact that in the Bay Area currently, PHP engineers will work for any small business per hour for approximately what a cleaning service charges.

More importantly, it means that there are rising new mediums to advertise other than the search engines themselves. Think RSS, the release of Microsoft's Vista in 2007 (where a competing search toolbar will be imbedded in Windows!) and Local Search will all be, "the next big thing."

Be sure your website business is an early adopter as this next phase of Internet Marketing comes down the pipe - that way you won't feel behind the curve as you may have felt with search engine marketing.