The importance of online searching to web business is booming. The number of online searches in 2005 rose from 3.3 billion to 5.1 billion between December 2004 and December 2005 while the number of Internet users in the U.S. rose a mere 3 percent, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

These are big numbers – and that’s not the number of searches in the year, those numbers are the searches during December! With search being such a huge part of the internet business milieu, no new web business can afford not to consider search engine marketing. You need to have a site which can be found. You need to assume that your site will be compared to others in the industry, and that you need to compare favorably in order to grow your business.