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For business owners who have websites, driving customers to your site is one of the best ways to drum up additional business. There are a number of ways to receive traffic; for example, online advertising, as well as through links on search engine results pages. Search traffic has become much sought after in recent years, thanks to the success of engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo in providing a way for Web users to find websites that answer their questions. Being found in a search engine is also free, as opposed to online advertising, which costs money. This is why something called search engine optimization (SEO) has grown in popularity.

Many business owners prefer being found via search over running ad campaigns, and some will even pay specialists in the SEO field to make sure their websites are optimized to be found in major search engines for the keywords they're targeting. These results are called "organic," or "natural" listings, as opposed to ads that might also appear on a search engine results page. SEO specialists perform tweaks in the page's code, altering META data such as a page's description and keywords. The content of the page also matters, and most specialists work to optimize that, as well.

So why would a business want to pay for better organic search engine rankings, but not for advertising? On average, a lead acquired organically from search results pages is less expensive to get than a lead from a paid advertising campaign. A large majority of search users have also grown blind to pay-per-click ads on search results pages, meaning businesses have a better chance at getting a click-through from an unpaid search result than an ad. Another advantage is that concentrating on securing high search engine rankings presents the opportunity for a business to show up multiple times on a single results page. To achieve this with paid advertising, you'd have to run multiple ads and spend more money.

If you run a business and you feel that you'd be able to increase your business by becoming more visible in some of the top search engines, hiring an SEO company is something you can consider. By gaining better placements on engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, you can decrease your cost per lead, put a link to your company where Web searchers are looking the most, and potentially secure multiple placements on the same page.

Shawn Farner independently authors articles for WebDrafter.com, Inc. SEM clients like Website SEO company WebDrafter.com, Inc. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author only, and not those of any other person, company, or organization. No guarantee or warranty, express or implied, is made regarding the accuracy, fitness, or use of the content herein.