In today's sales environment it is safe to say that if you are involved in the sector then you have a website. However it is surprising how many companies appear to fail to use their website to it;s full potential, only using it as a reference or an on line brochure. In the sales world, this is a huge waste of potential. Any company should be looking into search engine optimisation, or SEO as it is usually referred to as a method of gaining extra sales.

For example, consider a clothes shop in Merthyr, South Wales. It would undoubtedly have a much smaller potential turnover than a similar shop located in Oxford Street, London. In practice however the costs would be much lower running the store in Merthyr, so the London store would need to make far more sales to run at a profit.

In the on-line world, its more of an even playing field. You can have a big budget or a small budget, but if you reach the top of search engine such as Google, your website (or store in this example) is reachable to many new customers. In our example, with a top Google placing, the Merthyr store could potentially earn thousands of pounds more than the London store and the majority would be all profit! If you don't know where to start with Search Engine Optimisation, surely the logical thing to do is to approach a company that specialises in SEO?

You can list a large amount of problems with companies claiming to be SEO experts. Firstly, their costs are likely to very high and variable. There are so many offering different services, it is hard to conclude if you would be getting good value for money. However you can take this on board and learn how to do it yourself! Although many alleged experts will tell you it's complicated, the truth of the matter is that search engine optimisation isn't an overly complicated subject. By a SEO book and join a few SEO forums and you will be pointed in the right direction. You can pick up the basics in no time and the sense of community and assistance is surprisingly good.

With a little bit of time, practice and patience you will see your website climb towards the summit of Google and you will be gaining all these additional sales...for free!

This article is written by Jonathan Walker of Jobs in Sales