Search: The act of seeking or looking diligently.

Engine: A machine that converts heat energy into mechanical work.

The Big Lie: Your customers will diligently spend time to pour their passion, their heat energy, into the mechanical output of an automated database. And even if they do, that the output will even help them find what they are looking for.

Ask yourself honestly—are your customers reaching you from the search engines, or do you assume they are?

The average customer has an impulse or a driven interest to visit your site. Either way, they have a few words in mind when looking for you.

If you are selling pizza, it’s simple. Just get to the top of the search engines for pizza. But what if I am selling pizza in Paradise, California? Then my keywords become "Pizza, Paradise, California," right? Not quite. The biggest city near Paradise is Chico, so add "Chico" to your list of important keywords.

Exhausting game, isn’t it?

Now think of your customers. They’re forced to string words together to figure out what they heck they’re looking for. Will they take the time to discover you with more than two keywords?

I doubt it. All that matters are results.

If you can generate good results from a search engine, use them. One friend told me that if he sells one customer from a search engine, it will all be worthwhile. That kind of attitude can kill your business. Check your statistics and see where they come from. There are simple programs to tell you who is coming from where (WebTrends, for example). If your customers are coming from search engines, then devote your time. If not, adapt.

Search engines can take up to two months to register your site; your customers are seeing piles of old information, dead Web sites, and bad advertising before they even reach you. You are judged by related Web sites, as well. Funny how many bad Web sites get to the top of the search engines, mostly because they spend all their time fooling the search engines instead of selling their customers.

Search engines were the first emperors of the Web. Some are useful, some are not, and most of the big ones are publicly traded.

Their hype is not a lie; they do provide a needed service.

Their job is to brand themselves—a job of mass media marketing. That is their purpose, to have lots of people scour them, while popping up targeted banner ads.

I have a client who offers 90% stock loans on the Web. You’ve heard of home owner’s loans; this is like stock owner loans, bringing a tremendous tax savings. The stock holdings act as collateral. Instead of selling their assets and paying tax, they get a loan against them. The lender holds on to the stock.

This innovative financial product is new. Few people would even think of the words "stock loan." The job is to build awareness on the Web of the product.

Of course, the client asks me if their site is coming up first for "stock loans." What a loaded question. Here’s why:

1. I could tell him yes, but it doesn’t matter. His customer hasn’t heard of stock loans. Why would anyone enter the term in the first place?

2. In some search engines, any Web page with the words "stock" or "loan" will come up, too. You’ll find Wall Street sites, warehouse sites, livestock sites, real estate loans, home loans, car loans, and any other kind of loan site. The thing they have in common is a word. Often little else.

3 While you may be able to get to the top, once they see the 500 or so returns and click on a few of the dead ends, your potential customers will leave. The mediocrity of other sites will inhibit people from exploring too deeply. They’ll click on a few sites and leave immediately if it does not answer their question. With stock loans, the customer is not even sure of what to ask. This makes the search engines an unlikely source of leads.

4. The final nail in this coffin is the fact that people with that much money would be unlikely to poke through a search engine. They would much more likely be referred.

Which is the truth about search engines? They are referral mechanisms and have some value, but the referral carries little credibility because it is built only on words.

My client needs to target financial planning sites, places where people learn to invest their money, and find a way to either email them, place a banner ad or, in some way, shape, or form, generate a lead directly.

But he wants to believe in a motivated, intelligent, driven audience with nothing better to do than invent the words, and the idea of, "stock loans."

My friend Jonathan Mizel has a saying: "Customers are three things. They are lazy, they are selfish...and they are right."

No one wants to work hard to work with you. Ask yourself: Can I describe my business in two words or less? Can I write a one-sentence description summing it up?

If you cannot, the search engines will likely not help you; even better, they will not help your customers find you.