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 was only a few thousand websites, the saying could have been true. But, to look at the Internet honestly, in December of 1999, it was estimated that there were over 16 million websites out there 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%+ 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 the site to the Top 20 search engines, and then they are confused, dismayed and upset with their website designer or host, because traffic is not what they expected. Further, the folks who own the websites, can often feel neglected when they try to locate their sites on the search engines and don't find themselves near the top, if at all.

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 might expect to spend a one-time fee to build that beautiful website and have it submitted to the search engines, and spend a small monthly fee to have it hosted by a web provider or ISP. These same companies, with all of their real world experience, fall in the same traps over and again when they make the transition to the Internet. They expect that in the free world of the Internet, that they can effectively reach their customers with no regular cash expenditures beyond building and hosting the site.

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 16 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. There are over 16 million websites trying to get the attention of the consumer. Granted, 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 Internet to 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 over 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 have built.

Before we begin, I must note that 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, but 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. By adhering to the following rule, you will get the most out of the Internet's promise: don't submit your site too often --- make the most out of each site submission...