Don't count on search engines to supply all your leads
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Productive Internet Marketing Can Succeed Without Search Engines

Believe it or not, a business can operate successfully on the Internet without good search engine placement. That does not mean that you should not strive to get good rankings in the search engines, but it does mean that a company should not spend their entire budget trying to get great search engine placement.

Ten is the limit

Only ten web pages will be listed on page one of the search results at Google. Yahoo or MSN. That’s right; there will be only ten web pages listed on page one of the search results.

Search for any "key word" and most likely there will be millions of pages found, with only ten displayed at a time.

According to the Internet Archive there are currently 85 billion web pages on the Internet. And, they have not archived everything that is out there, so that 85-billion number is actually smaller than the real number of existing web pages.

With only ten listings on page one of the search results, there are going to be a lot of disappointed people in the world. They cannot all be on page one of the search results. And the cost of tweaking a website to improve its placement can be quite expensive for the results obtained.

Two essentials for success

There are two "First Steps" which will almost guarantee an effective and productive website.

Step One: Design the website to sell the chosen products or services. This sounds stupidly obvious, but is often overlooked in the development of fancy graphics, flash presentations, and other content that may not lead to favorable action on the part of the viewer. Sales conversion is the most important element in any successful business plan.

Make the website as complete as possible. Try to include everything a prospect might need in order to decide to place an order, inquire for more detailed information, or to visit your store. In general, include everything a good salesman would tell a prospect in a face-to-face presentation.

Step Two: Create other promotion tools specifically designed to direct prospects to your website. A few are listed below:

o Include your web address on all stationary, business cards, and forms
o Add your web address to all of your e-mail communications
o Use bulk e-mail to selected prospects
o You can use smaller ads designed to lead prospects to your website
o Direct mail programs should always include a prominent invitation to visit the website.
o Identify your website on truck and other signage.
o Don’t forget phone book ads, association directories, etc.

Keep it simple

It is all a matter of figuring out how to get traffic to your website, and more importantly, how to convert traffic to inquiries and sales.

It doesn’t matter if your site consists of just a handful of pages, or many hundreds. Start with the basics and test the results as you go along.

Building links is not about search engine listings

The fact is that every person using the Internet is clicking on links to take them from one website to another. Some links are in e-mails; others are in paid advertisements on websites. Even social bookmarking websites have links to other web pages.

Building links to your website is about getting your sales message, with its accompanying link, in front of the people most likely to buy what you are selling, in a way that encourages your potential customer to click your link and visit your website.

You may need to buy advertising at that location. You might be able to write an article to give to them, in exchange for a link to your website. The goal of linking is to give your potential customers more ways for them to find your website.

An extra benefit

Although this article is about succeeding on the Internet without relying on search engines, anyone who pursues linking for the purpose of attracting customers will find their websites improving in the search engine rresults.