Since the introduction of the web in the late 90′s, it’s growth has been explosive with an impressive 25% of all people on the planet using it. Worldwide, Internet usage seems to have grown roughly 340% since the beginning of the millennium.

This equates to nearly 1.6 billion people all across the world who use the Internet today. Chances are that these people surfing the web are hungry for information – information that they will eventually use for purchasing a product or service. Studies estimate that over $130 billion was spent in America online last year. That’s more revenue than fortune 500 companies make!

In order for your small business to get a piece of this $130 billion pie, you need to find different ways of promoting your website online and bringing hundreds of qualified visitors to it on a daily basis. If you’re looking into paid advertising like pay-per-click (PPC), watch out – these campaigns could get extremely expensive and often times lead to campaigns shutting down right with the businesses that spend the money to run them!

Small businesses that want to maximize their web presence realize that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a much better resource over pay-per-click advertising. They might now know that SEO better be more than just keyword research and metatag improvements. SEO should focus on getting the maximum exposure possible from many different Internet resources.

These resources can be identified by a reputable and ethical SEO firm, and the goal will be to increase exposure and visibility for your website using a combination of:

Optimizing each and every individual page on your website. Lots of folks don’t know this but website don’t rank in the search engines for just the domain name – every single page of your site is available to rank – this means leveraging more pages and more keywords. It significantly increases visitor volume and ranking potential within the search engines.

Backlinks. Clicks that come through to your site via links embedded in other sites improve search engine rankings. A good SEO firm will work hard to secure backlink opportunities and will do so in an ethical and professional way.

Understanding the Competition: Your business will find hidden ways of driving more traffic to its site by understanding what keywords the competition is going after – often times you will find keywords with little competition that have high-relevancy and “buying” potential. You can easily rank for these keywords since your competition missed them!

Social Media. Leveraging the masses of social media (Myspace, Linkedin, etc) will allow for further expansion of the exposure your website should enjoy.

Detailed Monthly Reporting. A good SEO firm will provide your business with detailed reporting, usually once a month, with the improvements that your website has made in the search engines.

Effective SEO companies should provide you with these tools that will further promote your business online and allow you to gain maximum exposure and awareness. Competition for sales is hard enough when times are good – and when the economy is shrinking, selecting an effective and economical SEO firm is an extremely important decision.

Retail sales have declined in the double-digits since last year – ecommerce has only experienced a 5% decline in the first quarter of 2009.

In the economy today, such a small decline actually puts the world of ecommerce ahead of most businesses to-date. If your small business has a properly managed SEO strategy, it could possibly miss participating in the current recession altogether!