Every small business owner, and especially those in the professional services fields, need to realize that the entire initial customer interaction with your business is no longer the yellow pages or even the home laptop or PC. With a smart phone in nearly every hand, it is essential that you realize that this has become the primary customer driver for new customers to find and use your services.

This presents some new marketing issues that cannot be ignored. Given the little 5 inch screens on these phones, it is unlikely that a user is going to scroll down as much as they might on a regular laptop screen. In any case, you must face that every effort must be employed to assure that your business is at or near the very top of Google, Bing, and Yahoo in this day and age or your business, from a marketing standpoint, has become obsolete and you have become prey to your competition who does employ such efforts. This field of employing techniques to raise your search engine rankings is called "search engine optimization" (SEO), which is a highly complex and competitive business. The day of making a web site, just so you can say you have one, is gone. It is of little value that your patients or clients who are already your customers can find your site by typing in its full name as this is not what your potential new customers are doing. They are defining their search by what service or product they are looking for. They probably don't even know you, and never will if you aren't employing solid SEO techniques.

Another important and often misconception is that your web page was optimized when it was built. Website optimization is, or should be, an ongoing process for the life of your business. Your site's "on-page" optimization, although important, is not the most key factor in ranking high in the search engines. You may find now that you are ranking high from such optimization, especially if your site is older, but with the burst in optimization that is going to happen, it will not remain true and you will find your ranking falling almost certainly over time. Moral of the story is that you should employ a SEO specialist as an ongoing and integral part of your business marketing plan or you will be bound to suffer the consequences. Garry Cooper owner - http://firstupseo.com and http://chicodermatologists.com