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Please feel free to use the Article -
"THE PROCESS OF BUILDING INTERNET TRAFFIC
FROM A REAL WORLD PERSPECTIVE"
in your publication. The article must
be used in its entirety with the
resource box included at the bottom.
Article was written in January, 2000.
Copyright © 2000 by Bill Platt
WORD COUNT: 886
CHARACTER COUNT: 65 wide
This article may be obtained already formatted
for email, via autoresponder at:
Real-World@WindstormComputing.com
Though it is not a requirement for publication,
I do ask that as a courtesy, you send a copy of
your publication with the article inside to:
EDITOR @
WINDSTORM COMPUTING.COM.
By matching the publication of an article with
the jump in traffic, it gives me a better idea
of where I might like to do ad swaps or
advertising, in the future. Thank you.
================ BEGIN ARTICLE =================
"The Process Of Building Internet Traffic
From A Real World Perspective"
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...
RESOURCE BOX:
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Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to
helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their
businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles, just like
the one you have just finished reading. His article distribution
service can help you deliver your reprint articles to a much larger
audience: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com
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