Every day thousands of new businesses are born. A new entrepreneur enters the scene, gung-ho to make his/herself a millionaire.

The Small Business Administration is there for those people, to help them take those first baby steps. Register your business name. Get a bank account. Hire an attorney and accountant. Register a domain name. Print some business cards.

Pretty much everyone who joins the self-employed world is revving up for fun, excitement, and of course a big payout.

But what percentage of these go-get-em people are really serious about their online presence? Is your website going to play an important role in your business, or will you treat it as an afterthought?

“Oh, I guess we’ll need a website, too.” Wrong answer.

That answer may have been ok a few years ago, but in today’s economy, your online presence should play a significant role in your marketing strategy. Many small businesses I deal with are starting to realize that print media and advertising is taking a back seat to their website.

Business owners need to be serious about their online presence. More and more people are going to a ‘research online, buy offline‘ model in their lives. This is especially crucial for retail and service outlets that rely on local walk-in traffic.

If you’re selling the best widgets ever, and you’re not online, many people won’t even know your company exists, even if you’re right down the street.

Of course, there are many more factors involved than just being online. You’ve got to optimize your website to capture those searches, which means more time and money invested into getting your website to that point.

And this is where the breakdown occurs. Most small businesses don’t even realize the impact of optimizing their website for local organic results. Even worse, most web designers don’t either. Big problem.

A smart business owner will budget in money to get their website built and optimized. Even if it’s only a few hundred bucks a month, they need to realize the impact will be much greater than spending that extra few hundred on a bigger Yellow Pages ad. Save money, put your URL in the Yellow Pages ad, and budget that extra money to bringing in even more leads through your site.

Your website is a reflection of how serious you are about gaining customers. You can’t just throw up a splash page and think you’re done.

So, how serious are you?