Be prepared to promote your own URL just as you would your phone number and your address. You will cease to trade overnight if you leave it to the Search Engines!

Here's why!

Your Website Locateability and Search Engines - Fanciful Thinking or just straight Fraud?
With a website presence the REAL problem is having a customer, especially a new one, locate your website. If you believe that this will be automatic once you have spent the money registering your site with all those search engines then you are, unfortunately, sadly mistaken.

You may very well be encouraged to believe that this is true - especially as it is something that you so much want to be true. And when you combine your desire to believe with a commercial benefit for the person encouraging that belief you have a very real capacity for manipulation.

Search Engines do paly a part in website location, however common sense dictates that with - quite literally Billions of websites, let alone website pages - the chances of being in the top ten search results are - to say the least - very small.

Those that are pay dearly for the privilege. That's how Search Engines make their money ....

And when your website is found a high conversion rate - from visitor to customer - is around 1%. The norm is less than 0.3%!!!

Search Engines are Wonderful for Customers - but if you place too high a focus on them to bring customer traffic to your site they can be potential disasters for YOU!

 Word of Mouth is the Key!
Word of mouth is more important in driving traffic to a website than search engines or links. Websites are still failing to recognize the importance of user satisfaction in encouraging regular users and new visitors. Nearly 2x as many regular users of a site say that they first hear of a site through friends or relatives. Around 98% of satisfied users also say that they would recommend a site to someone they knew, compared to just 1% of dissatisfied users. Nearly 40% of Internet users claim that failure to update content on a regular basis is a key reason for dissatisfaction. Around 33% say that not being able to personalize a site leads to indifference. 32% of users mentioned both the quality of the layout, and the time it takes to download a webpage as reasons for not returning to a site, or recommending it to others.
Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), May 10; 2002:

 Customer Awareness of Your URL - It's the ONLY road to Success!
Of 80,881 discrete and independent visitors to 5 widely content-variable sites, an average of only 5.07% used search engines to access these sites. Individual sites varied from 1.05% to 12.13%. Expressed differently, an average of 94.93% of all traffic to these sites came from direct use of their URLs and NOT from search engines!

If you wish to be serious about having your URL be found by Internet Search Engines you must now be prepared to invest serious money each year to participate in the "Overture", "FindWhat", or "Google Adwords" position auctioning concepts. This allows you to "buy" into one of the top 40 positions on the top Search Engines by participating in a daily auction for these positions. This auction allows you to bid on a "per click-through" price to allow you to achieve the required position per key-word or phrase. If you wish to participate in more than one keyword or phrase then the costs are multiplied accordingly. The more common the keyword or key-phrase the more one has to bid for the top positions.

Be prepared to invest possibly even more than $5.00 US plus, per click-through, per keyword or phrase if you want to participate in this venture! [Rates of many times this figure are common.] At the "norm" of 1% strike (1 sale per 100 click-throughs) that's $500 US cost per sale using a $5 bid. Working on a 0.5% strike rate (probably safer - that's one sale per 200 click-throughs) it makes it $1,000 US per sale. And that's just using ONE keyword or phrase! Can your your business afford that sort of "advertising" outlay?
FreedomLink Pty Ltd, 31 March 2003:

And then of course there's always your competitor's ability to cost you a fortune from "click-throughs".

(1) Network Click Fraud:
Bogus click-throughs by the publisher on ads that appear on their site or Engine in order to raise their revenues and keep you interested.

(2) Competitive Click Fraud:
Bogus clicks by competitors, especially for high cost words This is designed to cost you as much money as possible.

(3) Impression Fraud:
Bogus searches displaying ads but with no click-throughs. The effect is to lower the competitor's click-through rate and disqualify or lower a competitor's ad ranking.

Some fraud can be easily detected. But when it's linked to sophisticated controlling software or outsourced low labour cost Countries like India it's virtually impossible to detect. (People are paid to simply sit and click - so you pay a much bigger bill to the Search Engine owners. It's a cheap way to damage a competitor. Paying someone 1 cent per click whilst that same action is costing your competitor $5.00 is an easy and very cost-effective advantage over your competitor!)

This style of fraud has become so prevalent that there are now companies you can pay to try to detect it. In fact there are now the early stages of legal Class Actions against Google and Yahoo because offended companies feel that they have been exposed without sufficient protection!

Where does all this nonsense stop? That's easy to answer. It stops with you. There is no "Magic Bullet". Just develop the "cost-and-risk-free" habit of promoting your own URL to your own customers ....]

  You're either the Best or the Lost - There's no in between!
The top four search engines; Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL combined accounted for 92.79% of all global search referrals to shopping websites.
WebSideStory, Dec 04; 2002

This, combined with the research statistics given above, simply means that unless you are prepared to spend the considerable time and money to be in the top 10 listings of these search engines for your site function it's better to consider other options.

On average, around 93% - 95% of all traffic to your website will come from visitors who are AWARE of YOUR URL. This means that you can expect around 99.93% to 99.965% of all your e-commerce trade to come from people who are aware of your URL. Now do you see why it pays to promote your URL, and why businesses are using every means possible (including business cards, letter-heads and all printed material, ads, and promotions produced by your business, Road Signs and the Mass-Media) to get their message across?

Recently seen at Erina, on the East Coast north of Sydney, was a large road sign.

Tired of trying to be found at www? Then use this space instead!

And another between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast:

Find us on the web at... www....... . com.au

And at the Big End of Town - where business is high-cost and highly competitive - you have those that know how to do it right!
 

© Compliments of Virgin Blue Airlines

And look how they promote their URL! The name of their business has nothing like the space given to their website address - and their site address is more prominent than their phone number!!!

Are Internet Business Directories the answer to the dilemma of trying to have your business and website found by a customer?
The best way to answer this is for you to actually try using one. Unless you know where a business is physically located they are just as frustrating as Internet Search Engines. If you are already listed in one try finding YOUR business using the same level of awareness as a naive customer! And by a naive customer we mean one who doesn't known that you exist, and has no idea where you might be located if you did!

You may also arrive at the conclusion that it might pay to spend thousands of dollars advertising your website's address on a Road Sign!

Simple and Cost-Effective Ways to Increase Your Site Exposure.
Ways to Promote your URL to Your Customers:
It is ESSENTIAL that you now consider that your URL is now just as important as your Business Name and your Business Phone Number, and it MUST be displayed in every instance where these two items are displayed—preferably in the same sized font!

With your Trading Name and Logo, include the message above on/in:
 

		ALL of your direct advertising in any media
		Staff Uniforms
		Menus
		Flyers - In house and Letter-drops
		Brochures
		Carry Bags
		Faces, Edges and backs of your Business Cards and promotional materials
		Statements, Invoices, Delivery Notes, Letterheads, Envelopes
		Computer stickers, Magnetic stick-ons
		Via Hot-Linked e-mails
		Counter displays, Doors, Shop-fronts
		On-hold phone messages
		Local media Editorials; Organised competitions; Cross-business promotions
		Cars, trucks, busses, trains, road signs, etc - anywhere normal advertising occurs
		As a targeted and integrated adjunct in your normal advertising using print, radio, or TV
		Print, radio, or TV Infomercials or speciality advice programs
		Holding local games or competitions in conjunction with local non-competitive businesses
		Editorials in local papers or print media

The more that your URL is exposed the more your business will be exposed. Your Simply Efficient™ website will work for you, and your customer is not being exposed to the promotions and distractions of other businesses.

Around 85% of normal commercial websites are not considered to be successful. Why? Because they carry old and stale information, they're poorly designed, they focus on the requirements of the business or the web designer—not the customer, and they can't be found by Customers.

Be VERY careful about spending money to have your URL registered with Internet Search Engines. It's a great way to throw money away and the fastest way possible to become disheartened with e-commerce.

So make sure you promote your own web presence direct to your own customers because then you'll have REAL marketing power!

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