For anyone who used Google Adwords and participated in the usual bidding frenzy for popular keywords, the news that they may now be the biggest online business in Australia comes as no surprise.

What is surprising in the same article is the comparison between Google's estimated revenue and that of virtually all existing traditional media. Are we really at the point where online advertising and search engine marketing has overtaken traditional media? And if so, what can a typical small business do to adapt?

The first obvious point is that you have to be in it to win it. We are now fast approaching if not already at the point where searching for all types of products and services happens primarily, even exclusively online. While this is great news for the big companies behind the world famous search engines, it also means that it's become an over crowded marketplace where being found can get very expensive.

Whether you're just dipping your toe into the fast expanding ocean of online advertising, trying to stretch your marketing budget to cover both online and traditional, or have even made the move completely onto the digital space, you need to ask yourself: is your website an effective tool to convert those precious leads into sales?

More specifically:

• Can you set up stand alone landing pages to act as a destination for specific campaigns or even ads?
• Can you create as many lead acquisition forms as you have marketing activities?
• Are you able to integrate conversion tracking into your lead acquisition forms and constantly fine tune and manage these as needed?
• How easy is it to manage the SEO tags of your website? How granular can you get?

And more subjectively:

• Does your website combine the right mix of engagement, creativity and usefulness to turn a visitor into a lead?
• How quickly can you refresh existing content or add completely new content to support your advertising campaign based on user feedback?
• Can you fine tune or even completely overhaul your entire site structure and navigation based on feedback from the market?

Ultimately, it's hard earned cash that goes into advertising, both online and traditional so you must make the most of it. Every part of your business, including your website, must be geared towards converting the traffic that advertising generates into leads, and those leads into customers.

Is your website up to the job?