Right now, many businesses are seeking to hire a search engine optimization company that will utilize different approaches to ensure that their sites are the ones getting the top results on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Many e-marketers believe that their sites are already appropriately optimized and that search engine optimization companies would not be able to help. The engines are indexing the individual product pages, and those pages are appearing at the top of the results lists, so many sites do not expand upon their SEO efforts. The problem is that these sites are likely missing out on an entire category of shoppers.

Take, for example, a fictional e-commerce site that sells books and that has hired a search engine optimization company. One of the thousands of products that this fictional site sells is the book How to Find Great Restaurants in New York by Fred Q. Smith. If its search engine optimization company has done its job properly, a Google search for the book's title or even for "great restaurants Fred Smith" should bring up the site's page for that book at the top of the results. This indicates that the SEO strategy in place is working appropriately--for one type of buyer.

A quality search engine optimization company understands that a buyer that is typing this information into the engine is extremely motivated--he has already done his research about the particular book, and he knows that he wants to purchase it. That makes this strategy used by certain search engine optimization companies very valuable--a business can catch the targeted buyers who are no longer browsing but are already buying. There's no way to tell how often a book's particular title is typed into a search engine. It could be once a month, once a week, or once a year, but it is a phrase that will likely bring in sales.

Search engine optimization companies also are aware that, at the search stage, the targeted buyer is likely doing price comparisons before making a final purchase. Therefore, he might be going from search engine result to search engine result, checking the price of the book at one site and then backing up to check the price elsewhere. If he does buy his book from this site, there is no way to gauge if he is going to return for future purchases. Instead, the next time he wants to buy something, he'll repeat the process--research, search, compare, and then buy. He might choose the site, but he might instead choose another bookseller. Therefore, in order to attract more sales, a search engine optimization company needs to broaden its strategy to encompass more than just the targeted buyer.

The other type of buyer, the one who is often ignored by search engine optimization companies, is the person who is looking for a resource for multiple purchases over time. This person

is essentially looking for a partner--a site that can be bookmarked and returned to over and over again. This type of buyer can be identified by the phrases that she uses. For example, she may be an HR manager who needs to buy books every few months to train new employees, or the CEO of a new company who wants to stay on top of the latest trends. And so, she won't search for a particular book title or author, she'll search for a general phrase--one like "business books."

To catch this type of buyer, a search engine optimization company needs to not only optimize for manufacturer names and model numbers but also for these general types of phrases. This strategy can be taken a crucial step further by savvy search engine optimization companies by building site pages that have essential, relevant information for someone who might become a lifetime buyer. The book site's search engine optimization company, for example, might create a page that features a sampling of restaurant guides offered at the site, clearly intended to reach the lifetime buyer.

A quality search engine optimization company might create this type of page to list benefits a business provides to its customers, to describe awards the site has won, or to feature specific products that meet the needs of the searcher. Basically, when trying to reach a potential lifetime buyer, search engine optimization companies need to create a page or pages that explain why one should buy from a business today, tomorrow, and well into the future. These buyers are, clearly, the ones who provide a greater value over the long term than the shopper looking for one, and only one, specific product.

Now of course, there are caveats to these rules, and good search engine optimization companies will pay attention to these caveats as well. Are there buyers who will search on a specific product and then revisit a site many times in the future for additional purchases? Of course. Are there people who are searching on general phrases because they're not sure what to buy who will then make a single purchase and never return? Naturally. But these are largely exceptions, and the focus of a search engine optimization company should be on the bigger picture.

The fact remains that if a searcher types a general phrase into a search engine, finds a site in the results, makes a single purchase, and never returns to that site, that person is still a customer who is spending money with that business. And undecided searchers using a site for research purposes about specific products are more likely to bookmark and return to that site if they have a positive experience, so it's still important that a search engine optimization company makes sure to cater to the potential lifetime shoppers at all times. While the trend with e-commerce sites in general is to optimize for the specifics, capable search engine optimization companies can expand this strategy to target the lifetime buyers as well. Such an approach can be a simple way to increase both an e-commerce site's traffic as well as the site's business.