How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you’d hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site?
If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online business.
Misconception #1: If you put up a Web site, people will come. Regretfully, this is far from the truth. Competition is fierce on the Internet, and you must learn how to compete in order to have a successful online business. Putting up a Web site is the first step, but doing nothing more will ensure your site’s failure.
Misconception #2: Amateur promotion will render professional
results. Many people believe that they can purchase a handy dandy software program
that will submit their sites to 999 search engines and directories, and their
promotion efforts are over. The truth of the matter is, the majority of the traffic
to most Web sites comes from the major search engines and directories, so submitting
to 990 other ones is simply a waste of time and won’t bring you any success.
Misconception #3: Submitting your site to the major search engines
and directories is all you need to do. Wrong. Think of it this way: there are
10 search results per page for most of the engines. Most people won’t go through
any more than three pages of search results before giving up and trying another
search. So, only the top 30 rankings really matter. If your site is #3,429 out
of two million results, how much traffic do you think you’ll get?
Misconception #4: META tags are the key to success with the search
engines. Truthfully, very few of the major engines even look at META tags any
more. So, sticking META tags on your pages won’t bring you traffic and sales.
Misconception #5: The key to success on the Web is achieving
top 10 rankings for keywords that are important to your business. This way of
thinking is outdated. Instead, the key to success on the Web is bringing in extremely
targeted traffic that converts to sales. You can have all the #1 rankings in the
world, but if the rankings don’t convert to traffic that ultimately converts to
sales, your Web site will never be a success.
Robin Nobles conducts live SEO workshops
(http://www.searchengineworkshops.com) in locations across North
America. She also teaches online SEO training
(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). Localized SEO training is now
being offered through the Search Engine Academy.
(http://www.searchengineacademy.com) Sign up for SEO tips of the
day at mailto:seo-tip@aweber.com.
