It depends
Website designers want searches to work for free - Yahoo! News
Simply creating a website for your company isn't enough anymore. The blogging revolution - some 75,000 new blogs are created every day, according to blog directory Technorati - and the popularity of Internet search - Americans conducted 6.6 billion searches online in April - gives firms many more avenues for exposure. Savvy Web marketers realize that consumers turn to the Web to shop and to learn about companies, which is forcing them to market beyond just the company website.
Kind of. It depends on the business. Obviously if you have a web-based business (or an online component), being found through search engines is important. But if you have a store, all people really need is some pretty pictures, your address, your phone number, your email and your operating hours. And for the majority of their shopping for goods/services, people don't go to Google. They go to Yellow Pages or local search for their area. So that's where most businesses want to be: in the online YP directories.
