In the vast morass that calls itself the world wide web, it is quite easy for a little company to get lost amongst the clutter. This article talks about how an SME get noticed on the web. Most organizations these days have a Web presence of some description and many have even made the effort to provide some formal window into their organization via the Web. Some have gone beyond the simple Web space and have designed something they consider to be strategic. There are even a number of these who have worked on strategies for communicating their presence on the Web via advertising and other traditional forms of marketing communication. Unfortunately, few seem to have thought about `being found' on the Web other than through expensive advertising campaigns. Ultimately, as an SME, being discovered on the Web by potential customers seems unlikely. So, the question then is, "If you have something to say and no one can find you, then is it worth really saying it?"

Have you ever done a search on Google or some other form of search engine for a small business? Try typing in electrician or advertising agency and don't be surprised if you are overwhelmed by the response. Electrician gets you `just' five and a half million results on Google and advertising agency 60 million results. How about you hone your search and add the term `India' to it. Betternow it is 450,000 for electrician and 9 million for advertising agency. Let's try getting something a little more specific and substitute Mumbai for India. Electrician now shows 70,000 results and advertising agency 990,000. Who would you like to be? An electrician or advertising agency in Mumbai, relying on a Web search for your customers to find your Web space?

This is exactly the problem being faced by many small and medium-sized businesses that choose the Web as a mechanism for reaching their customers. Yes, they have built some form of Web presence. Probably, they are doing some form of online advertising/communication. But, according to a recent study at the IESEG Business School in Lille, France, very few are making the effort to end up, on the first or second page of a Web search by their customers. Many of these same companies, however, are spending inordinate amounts of money to reach customers via advertising on the Web. The short explanation is that they know and understand advertising, but don't know and/or understand search engine optimization. So, what exactly is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and why should they worry about it?

It's hard to identify the most important fact. Taken together, they certainly represent a picture of a mechanism that could promise to deliver the Web to SMEs as possibly their most important marketing tool ever - cheaper, understandable, and accessible. So, why aren't more of them using it? There have been a number of studies conducted on the use (and misuse) of search engine optimization by large business, but few have been done on the subject of SMEs. Intuitively, SMEs should love this type of marketing approach. The evidence is that they are actively using the net to reach their customers-witness the growth in online advertising with services such as Google's ad- words. Such growth does seem understandable, as such services promise an 80% reach into the Web for a relatively small outlay. But, given their predisposition for reaching customers via the Web, why aren't they using the near free SEO activity to reach the same (or greater) audience?

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