If I had a dollar for the number of times a potential client has said to me: “I want my website to be on Google’s top page”, right now these words would be getting typed by my butler while I seeped iced daiquiris in the shade, under an awning, at my beachside mansion.

It is only natural to want to be on the first page of Google and I have written a book which shows you exactly how to get your website to be on Google’s top page but, there is a question which needs to be asked and it is: “Is it necessary for your website to be on Google’s first page?” This is not as non-sensical a question as you may at first suppose. Yes, you do want to dominate Google’s first page and yes there are techniques designed to get you there, but that is only really useful if what you are selling has a niche audience, in which case you really do need to target the global market to make it pay, or you are selling something which everybody needs everywhere.

Most business I come across however are not like that. They have a local or regional focus which they loosely try to address through the web by engaging in search engine optimization (SEO) practices which are best suited to being a global business rather than being one focused on a smaller geographical area. This usually results in poor results and lost opportunities as well a websites which fail to perform to expectation.

It is always preferable, as a local or regional business to focus on attracting customers from your immediate locale using geo targeting and Google Local Business Center both of which will bring tangible results fast, to focusing too much on getting on the first page of Google where you will possible be crowded out by larger, global players.

The same goes for using Google Maps and listing your service there.

The point behind all this is that with search engines and optimization, like with everything else in business, the starting point needs to be one where we ask sensible questions beginning with ‘How’, ‘Why’ and ‘When’ and forego meta tags, header tags and RSS Feeds until we can actually understand the impact they will have and how we can assess it in terms of online business success.