Can You Build Online Business Success?

If your business has failed to build an online presence you are probably losing sales without even trying! Studies around the world have shown that 80% or more of people do research on the internet before making their buying decision. If you don't have an online presence, or you have an ineffective one then you are missing potential sales.

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Many businesses fail to understand the entire process of building an effective online presence. The problem is developers do part of the process, often quite separate from web designers. Both can work independently of copywriters and yet one person often tries to sell you into a website without being able to do each of these components. The issue is designers often make pretty pages but do not necessarily qualify as marketers. Developers may get you a good page rank for your business name but do not necessarily make nice sites. Without good copy you will most likely fail to convert visitors to customers, or ever entice them back.

The website is not the be all and end all either. How many people do you know have websites up online that nobody ever visits? How many times have you been searching for a business you know but you just can't seem to find them? These are common because many people in business do not understand their market or do not know how the internet works. Many consultants help them stay in this state and merely take advantage of the lack of knowledge.

For people to be able to find your business your listing needs to show up high on the page of the searches that your customers are likely to be doing. This isn't rocket science. If you think backwards about your own internet use, how do you find things online? You generally type a search into a search engine like Google. Then a page comes up with a number of listings and if you're lucky you might look at the first three or so, maybe the first page. Few ever go beyond this unless they are having trouble finding what they want. So that is probably what your potential customers are doing. If you rank well for your business name they need to know your business name and how often do you search for a business by name?

The key to ranking well for their searches is to know what keyword search terms they are searching with relevant to your business. There are a number of ways to do this, even using freely available tools on the internet. Then your site needs to optimized for those keywords so that the search engine knows you have content relevant to that topic on your site.

It really is that simple. That is what SEO is. Search Engine Optimisation is about maximising the ease with which a search engine like Google can find your site when a topic is searched. The basics of this are quite simple to learn and are one of the backbones of internet marketing.

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Once you site is optimized you really need to send visitors to it. This is called driving traffic. There are many simple and cost effective ways to drive traffic and again these can be learnt quite simply. However traffic is only half of the story. Without good content you will fail to convert traffic into buying customers.

This is something else you will have experienced. How often have you looked at one of the top listings when searching only to find a hard to read site that doesn't contain the information you are looking for? How long do you stay on that site? Again this is the experience your customers are having. Think about what they find when they get to your site is it all about you or is it all about them? Does it list information your customers are actually looking for or does it ignore their needs?

Good copy is an easy fix for this. The best marketers in the world write their own copy or learn good copywriting skills early on in their business careers. There are of course those who think they can't write so leave it to people who neither know their business or their customers. These business owners fail to realize that writing good copy is about following a system. It isn't magic and anyone can learn it.

So you see it is easy to lose money, waste money and in some cases throw money away to create an online presence that fails your customers. However it can be quite easy to fix. Firstly you need to put yourself in your customers shoes. Again there are free tools such as alerts and social media that can let you eavesdrop on your customers conversations which makes it a much simpler process to meet their needs on your website.

Building a successful online presence is not about completing one step in the process it is about having a complete fast web formula. You can learn the complete picture for yourself or invest in staff doing so by researching internet marketing training. Learning from an internet marketer with experience in successful off-line business as well as his own successful internet marketing open up a myriad of opportunities to grow your business.

James Schramko has a new internet marketing course in March 2010 - Fast Web Formula. Why wouldn't you consider learning from a sought after Australian internet marketer who was able to give up a 6 figure income to go it alone? Even if only to get yourself some knowledge with which to evaluate the consultants wanting you to invest your hard earned cash in their business. Why not invest some in yourself and yours first. It could be one of the best investments you ever make.

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