From Googles quality guidelines - 'Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines'.

But if you have a small business you want your website to appear on the first page of the search listings! You want it to appear at the top!!

There are two kinds of search engine listings. Natural and Paid.

Paid listings are usually labeled in a separate section such as "sponsored listings." An example of a paid listing is known as a "pay per click" or PPC. A pay per click (PPC) is a paid listing where the site's owner pays every time the listing is clicked. The fee per click can range anywhere from a a few pence to many pounds. Where your listing appears depends on how much you pay and whether you word your advert correctly and enter the right information and keywords into your PCC account.

Natural listings are the listings that are not paid for. They are determined by the search engines' algorithms (computer program instructions) for finding, sorting and ranking pages based on what you searched for. Because, often, natural listings are considered "more accurate" by searchers, getting in natural listings is typically preferable to getting in paid listings.

Enter "Search Engine Optimisation" or SEO for short. Search engine optimisation (or optimization, if you prefer) is the process of building search engine friendly sites that will be more likely to be highly ranked in the natural listings of search engines. The website's design and progamming will be optimised with search engines in mind giving it a better chance of gaining a good position in the listings.

Note the phrases "more likely" and "better chance" - there can be no guarantees of top listings. Once your nicely designed and optimised website goes live it may take from 3 days to 3 months to even get in the listings and several more months for it to gain some kind of stable position. But you could be lucky and get good results sooner rather than later - search engines are fickle creatures.

It can be frustrating not to get instant results but a well designed search engine friendly website will ensure you have the best chance of success.