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Small business Internet marketing can seem like a labyrinth to a small business owner new to the term. There is so much information available–much of it conflicting–that it’s easy to get lost and begin to suffer from information overload.

Here are a few ways small business owners can get started marketing their business on line.

* Blogging – A blog is simply a website which is frequently updated. While blogs used to be considered more personal, and resembled on line diaries more than websites, recently businesses have been starting to blog as a way of staying in contact with their customers. Even better than that, Google loves a blog. The more you update your site, the more the Google bots will visit, and the more the Google bots visit, the better chance you have of getting your business’s site found.

* SEO – or search engine optimization, is a huge topic. SEO simply means setting up your site to be friendly to the search engines by giving them the information they need in the places they expect to find it. Using title tags and meta description tags, clearly defining your keywords, and getting other sites to link back to your site are all a part of basic Seo.

* Pay Per Click – Pay per click is a form of advertising where the advertiser(you) buys space through an auction style system, and only pays when someone clicks on their ad. The results that you see at the very top of a search results page in Google are often pay per click ads, as are the smaller (and more obvious) ads off to the right of the page. Pay per click is very efficient at driving traffic to your site, but can be risky as well. You’d do well to hire a specialist in this area rather than plunge in by yourself.

* Article marketing – Whether you’re in the business of selling flowers or washing machines, chances are you have knowledge that someone wants. By giving this knowledge away on sites like EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com in exchange for a link or two back to your site, you can gain greater exposure for your business, and bring visitors in who would otherwise never have noticed you.

* Social Networking – Social networking is word of mouth advertising for the digital age. Instead of Aunt Suzy calling up Cousin Ida to ask who she hired to install the new windows, @AuntSuzy is posting questions about window installs on Twitter and Facebook. If your business is installing windows you’d be well advised to monitor those Twitter conversations. Help out @AuntSuzy with 140 characters of advice about choosing windows and who do you think she’ll be recommending to her friends when they need windows?

* Forum posting – Forums are just another form of social networking, except the conversation is generally more focused around a particular topic. No matter what business you’re in, there is a forum dedicated to it. Search Google for your topic Forum and you’ll find them. Get registered, start conversing, and as your reputation grows so will your business.

Small business internet marketing can seem to be a maze for those new to it. There is so much information available – a lot of it in conflict – so it’s easy to get lost and begin to suffer from information overload.

If you start a computer work at home business, it’s best to find one with good support and good training. They are out there and review here on this site.

It probably seems rather odd to have a new blog post on Search Engine Optimization and have it be about how SEO is a waste of money. I should probably support this opinion by throwing out a bunch of impressive numbers with lots of comma’s that I dug up during my hours of research, but to be completely transparent, I really didn’t do hours of research to write this. I could also talk about the amount of money spent on Search Engine Optimization each year and of course show its effectiveness with a really cool 3D chart, but charts and graphs generally irk me.

I have chosen instead to write from my own experience as the owner of an SEO company as well as a client…as a student of some of the most well known SEO guru’s in the industry as well as a teacher. Many of you are going to agree with what I have to say throughout the course of this and many of you won’t…and both of you are welcome and encouraged to leave your comments!

So, what exactly makes SEO a waste of money? Well, if your primary goal is to get a top 10 listing on Google, you can accomplish that fairly easily with little or no effort. You don’t need to pay someone like me to do it. All you need to do is find a keyword phrase that doesn’t have that much competition, write an article or two using it, make sure it’s in the title of your page and create a handful of external links using that phrase. Tada! So how come the phone still isn’t ringing?

It’s because there are so many vital aspects to SEO that go well beyond keyword research and placement and yet they are almost always overlooked. In most cases, it is because your goals are off. Most companies focus on a top 10 listing or doubling traffic, neither of which is a guarantee that business is going to improve. At the end of the day, what do you want the outcome of your campaign to be? I would think that it is to grow your business, correct?

If that is your goal, then it is clear that there is more to Search Engine Optimization than just your ranking and traffic. You need to think about all of the following and then some:

Ideal Client: If you aren’t clear on who your ideal client is, then how will you know what they want? Suppose you run a salon and your target audience is “anyone with hair.” How will you be able to connect with your visitor when a young woman has completely different needs than an older man? Yet, they all have hair.

Design: You can drive tens of thousands of visitors to your website, but if the site doesn’t have the look, feel and quality that the visitor is expecting, they will not do business with you. Try launching a bank website with really bright colors and pictures of bank vaults, gold coins and stacks of cash everywhere and let me know how it goes.

Keywords: When you are clear on who your ideal client is, put yourself in their shoes and learn what they are searching for and how they search for it. Someone who might be looking for a Denver Plumber to redesign their bathroom will search in a completely different way than someone coming home to 2 feet of water in their basement.

Content: Writing quality content that will appease the search engines at the same time that it inspires the reader is the key. If you cram your keyword phrase in the text enough times, you may get a good ranking but when your visitor reads your text you may come across as illiterate.

Solutions: Provide solutions for your visitors rather than patting yourself on the back all over your site. When someone does a search online they are either looking for the solution to a problem or the answer to a question. if you site is focused primarily on you and what you have done and what your credentials are, you aren’t solving the visitors problem and they will leave the site and find someone that will. Think about it. If you throw your back out and go to the chiropractor, do you want him to ramble on about where he went to school or do you want him to fix the problem?

These are just a few of the things we are going to talk about around here. As a reader, my request to you is that if you have an opinion, share it.