If you own your own home business enterprise then you almost certainly have a website for it. If for some reason you do not yet have a home business website I recommend you get one as soon as possible, since it has been estimated by at least one source that as much as 90% of all sales transactions will occur online by the year 2012. This estimate may be a bit overoptimistic but nonetheless you can see a strong trend here. Certainly the number of search engine queries has been growing steadily every year and certainly people are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of ordering products and services over the internet, according to the data. Once you have developed your home business website, the next step is to market it. Should you hire an SEO company or individual to do it for you? If so, what would they do for you specifically?

Essentially, an SEO firm or individual would develop an online marketing plan for your website and, while staying on top of various shifts in the

internet marketplace, would formulate a strategy best suited for you, after analyzing your competition and determining which keywords drive the most customers, sales or leads.

They could also be of assistance in other areas as well, such as advertising and content development.

Why would you want to hire an outside firm to do this instead of doing it yourself? Well, it should be noted that SEO is always changing as the major engines change their "search algorithm" on a regular basis and new rules are implemented. Therefore there is a strong benefit if you hire such a firm. On the other hand, it may be outside of your budget range as a home business entrepreneur and is it possible to do this all yourself (or in house if you have any employees)? Yes it is possible, assuming your targeted keywords are not overly competitive. The first step would be market research. Let's say as an example your home business is selling wax candles.

You would first research what other websites have the top spots on the major search engines. Next you would do a check on linkpopularity.com to find out how many backlinks (incoming links from other sites) that they have. This will give you an idea of how many you will need (although not an exact figure). You should also use the search term suggestion tool over at Overture to determine smaller related keywords as well.

It may be more effective to target these smaller niche terms if the big ones are too competitive. Next you will want to make sure your site has about a seven percent keyword density for the particular keywords that you are targeting. Next you will want to do an extensive linking campaign. This component of your efforts will probably determine your success more than any other. You want to obtain as many quality links to your site as possible. And here is the important part: you want the keywords you are targeting to be in the anchor or title text of the backlinks. The search engines understandably rank you in large part based on how other sites describe you. At this point you simply want to find as many relevent links as possible via niche directories, related forums, article writing and so on. I also recommend some targeted PPC as well. If you work hard, especially at this last phase of your campaign, you have a great chance for your home business website to shoot towards the top.