Most people aren’t really familiar with the term, "small business seo." By now, many have heard the term SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. They’ve heard the term, but it’s still a foggy notion of some kind of "magic internet weird science thing," that only the guys from Google really understand.

Well, if you don’t like analytical type equations, then you won’t like SEO either. It is a form of science, in the sense that, when all the right parts of the "search engine and content puzzle" are all put together properly, you end up with the results of the finished product you’re looking for.

Small business seo is no different than SEO for a personal blog someone writes once a week. Google, Bing and Yahoo, as well as all the other search engines, are looking for the same elements across the spectrum of web pages and content.

What is different about small business seo, is that, they have to have it working properly, while some guy or girl that just blogs on the weekend for kicks, about their personal interests or opinion about varied topics, doesn’t worry about it.

Small business SEO is critical for getting lots of organic traffic to their web site and translating that into new business profits.

The problem? Too many small business owners say," They just can’t afford those high priced SEO companies to get their business some web traffic." They feel comfortable doing it the old fashioned way they’ve always done it. Newspaper, TV, radio and Yellow Page ads seemed to get them enough business each year, so why jump on the small business internet band wagon?

Simple. More customers than they ever got before. More exposure than they’ve ever dreamed of and more FREE advertising than they could have imagined. Sure you have to pay for it originally or do it yourself, but the payoff of that effort keeps on producing year after year. Just try and drop the Yellow Page ad each year and see what happens!

Good SEO companies know more than just a few ways to capitalize and get the traffic to your company. There are so many ways to get traffic to your small business website that I could write a book about it, but I think enough "experts" already have.

Some of these activities take time and consistent effort. Most small businesses don’t have time to do all this and really do need a professional. If you as a small business owner wanted to do your own seo, here are just a few ideas for you to consider:

• Web 2.0

• Article Marketing

• Social Bookmarking

• Forum posts

• Press Releases

• Videos

• Web Directories

• RSS

• Pinging

• Blog posts

Let’s take the popular article marketing for instance; you have to have an article. Who writes it, you or a professional? Then it has to be submitted to the many article directories to be seen on the web. (Of course, you should put it on your website too.)

Maybe that only took you 2- 3 hours. That means your business didn’t have you running things for 2-3 hours. Can they do without you for 2-3 hours? If they can, go for it.

But wait; you only completed one task of this simple list of ten to do. Now you go post some thoughtful comments on a few forums and few more on some blogs. Before you know it, it’s past lunch time and you only left 4-5 posts or comments. (And you forgot to link your name back to your website… OH)

Small business SEO is no "stock the shelf and you’re done for the day." It’s a lot of work and sometimes VERY tedious. If you were to compare all the money you’ve spent (if you’ve been in business for any amount of time), and stacked it up against the ROI for SEO, you’d be asking yourself, "Why didn’t I start doing this sooner?" You didn’t know. Don’t beat yourself up about now, just find a good company and let them start growing your business for you. You won’t regret later!