THE PROCESS OF BUILDING INTERNET TRAFFIC FROM A REAL WORLD PERSPECTIVE
by Bill Platt
Why Do Most Brick-and-Mortar Businesses Fail On The Web?
"Build it and they will come" has always been the mantra of the Internet. In the old days, when there were only a few thousand websites, this saying may have held merit. But, to look at the Internet with open eyes will tell a different story. In December of 1999, estimates held that there were over 60 million websites trying to attract the interest of the surfer.
A few months ago, I read an assessment of traffic on the web, and it provided some startling details. The Top 1000 sites contain 85% of the content on the web and receive 90 plus percent of all of the web traffic. What's more, 93.6% of the web traffic travels through the Top 10 search engines, with 43.5% of all search engine referrals coming from Yahoo.com and 10.5% of all search engine referrals coming from AltaVista.com.
One of the greatest misnomers of the Internet is still that old mantra, "Build it and they will come." Folks go to great lengths to build a beautiful website, and then submit their site to the Top 20 search engines. Then they become confused, dismayed and upset with their website designer or host, because traffic is not what they expected. Further, these folks who own the websites, often feel neglected by the builder and host when they take the time to investigate their own standings in the search engines. Most website owners will not find themselves in the first 100 or so hits, let alone, near the top of the search engines results, as they blindly anticipate.
There are several factors that contribute to this common frustration. Let's take a look at the "brick and mortar" world of business for a moment. Companies understand that they must always wave their name and message under the noses of prospective customers in order to maintain a presence in the mind of the consumer. This process encompasses using advertising in various formats, including newspaper, radio, television, direct mail, etc. It involves maintaining a fresh cycle of advertising materials with different information to attract the prospective buyers. It sometimes even incorporates a saturation of advertising to a specific local market. Yet, the same companies who do well in the real-world of business might expect to spend a one-time fee to build that beautiful website and have it submitted to the search engines. Then they naturally spend a small monthly fee to have their site hosted by a web provider or ISP. These companies, with all of their real world experience, fall in the same traps over and again when they attempt to make the transition to the Internet. They expect that, in the free world of the Internet, they can effectively reach their customers with no regular cash expenditures beyond those of building and hosting their website.
OK, you visit your favorite search engine and type in the keywords that you most closely associate with your website; you hit Enter and wait for the results. The results come down ... OK, you're not in the Top 10. So, you click Next 10. Then you discover you are not in the Top 20. In desperation and annoyance, you click Next 10 a couple of more times, yet after having submitted to the Top 10 Engines, you still don't register in the Top 50. So, what happened? There are 60 million websites vying for the surfers attention and you wonder why your site doesn't come up in the Top 50?
In the local market, a business only has to compete with anywhere from two to two hundred competitors, depending on what type of business they are in. But, in the world of the Internet, the same business is competing with the "world" for the attention of the consumer. Of the 60 million websites on the web, only a portion of those sites may be in direct competition with the business in question, but again, Internet numbers can usually compress the potential of the net to only 5,000 keywords.
In five years of learning the Internet game, I have designed, built and promoted over three dozen websites. Yet, I have only built five that have reached Top 20 placement in over 6 search engines. I have one site right now that currently registers a #1 on 4+ search engines and Top 10 status on 4 others. The five
websites that I have taken to the top of the engines are the last five websites I built.
One really important rule that I must note is, every search engine has it's own set of submission rules. If you submit your site to certain search engines more than the search engine allows, your link can be barred from the engine due to "search engine spamming." These rules often change and the best way to stay current is to go to the 'add url' link of an engine or directory and follow the link to the FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions). Most directories only permit
a site to be submitted one time, while spider search engines (also called robots or crawlers) allow the same site to be submitted repeatedly. A general rule of thumb to keep in mind for spider search engines is to only submit the site once a month.
Getting the most out of the Internet's potential for your business/website requires that you keep these very simple rules in mind as you continue to do business on the web:
1. If traffic is low, optimize your website for better results before every post.
2. Don't Submit your site too often.
3. Know your market and your advertising mediums.
4. Spend the money to make sure that your copy is good enough to meet your desired results, before spending a single dime on advertising.
5. Don't be afraid to spend money to be seen.
6. The same rules that apply to your long-range advertising in the real world, should also apply to your long-range advertising plans in the Internet world.
7. Don't make the mistake in assuming that your web designer or web hosting provider is responsible for your advertising or advertising results. Do you expect your landlord to be responsible for your brick-and-mortar advertising or advertising results?
8. A business on the Internet is essentially the same as a business in the brick-and-mortar world. You should treat it as such.
Take me to the Next Article
© 2000-2004 Bill Platt
Bill Platt owns http://thePhantomWriters.com . Do you need
free content for your website or ezine? Our archives deliver
more than 450 free-reprint articles available for your use.
http://content.thePhantomWriters.com . Do you write your own
articles? Let us distribute them for you to our network of 6000+
publishers & webmasters http://thePhantomWriters.com/distribution
