From snowball stands to wedding bands, it's 100% crucial for a business to become as visible as possible online.

It's no secret that potential customers head straight to search engines like the top three Google, Bing and Yahoo! to search for what they need in a business, no matter how big or small. If you are not on the first page of these search engine listings, you are missing out on valuable business. Prime real estate for a business's Web site is in the top ten results of a Google, Bing or Yahoo! search.

This is especially true with local searches. Advertising and public relations experts agree that smaller businesses really need to concentrate their efforts on climbing the search engine pages for local keywords.

Once a customer finds your Web site online, what do they see? Is it easy for them to navigate?

The average amount of time a potential customer spends on your homepage is less than 7 seconds. You have to make those first few seconds count when attracting customers to your site.

Customers want to see a simple, organized web site while shopping around. They need to find all of the information they need on your business in just a few clicks. You need to make sure your site is extremely organized and use friendly. Also, make sure it is easy to load. Customers would rather see a clean, simple page than a flash movie that takes too long to load.

Now is the time to talk with the Internet geeks. Learn how to wisely invest in online campaigns as customers heavily rely on the Internet to find almost all of their goods and services. While they search online for everything they need and want... hair salons, oil changing stations, ice cream shops, air conditioner repair... make sure your business's site is right there for them to see and grab the information they need right away.