Before you begin to use your keywords for real, it is important to narrow down your long list of keyphrases yet further; to use them more efficiently in combination with one another; and to ensure that the end result is not unreadable garbage. In short, you need to understand the basic rules of what I call keyword deployment.
Whether you are building links, choosing domain names. or writing page text, you are trying to include your keywords in all of these in a search-engine-friendly way. While different search engines use slightly different algorithms, they all place importance on prominence, proximity, and density, the three basic rules of keyword deployment.
Follow the simple rules in this section in moderation and you will always get a good result. Overdo any one and you risk getting flagged as spam. The acid test is: Does it still read well for the human user? If it does and obeys the three basic rules, then the search-engine spiders (robot browsers, also known as crawlers, or Googlebots on Google) will love you. If, alternatively, your keyword stuffing would make a user laugh (or cry), then you are running a very real risk of failure.
Whether you are building links, choosing domain names. or writing page text, you are trying to include your keywords in all of these in a search-engine-friendly way. While different search engines use slightly different algorithms, they all place importance on prominence, proximity, and density, the three basic rules of keyword deployment.
Follow the simple rules in this section in moderation and you will always get a good result. Overdo any one and you risk getting flagged as spam. The acid test is: Does it still read well for the human user? If it does and obeys the three basic rules, then the search-engine spiders (robot browsers, also known as crawlers, or Googlebots on Google) will love you. If, alternatively, your keyword stuffing would make a user laugh (or cry), then you are running a very real risk of failure.
It will not have escaped your notice that by now, you may have a very long list indeed of keyphrase candidates for your site. Brad, as I have noted, has over 500 at this point. However, candidates are all they are.
Unless you have a very large, content rich site, it is unlikely that you will need so many phrases. Nor is it likely that you would be able to optimize effectively for so many.
Can I suggest that at this point, you cull a full 50% of your entire list, based on a KOI sort. Then add back in 10–15% of the words with the highest search frequencies. This should give you a more workable database with which to enter the final part of the D–A–D method, keyword deployment.
Unless you have a very large, content rich site, it is unlikely that you will need so many phrases. Nor is it likely that you would be able to optimize effectively for so many.
Can I suggest that at this point, you cull a full 50% of your entire list, based on a KOI sort. Then add back in 10–15% of the words with the highest search frequencies. This should give you a more workable database with which to enter the final part of the D–A–D method, keyword deployment.
Segmenting your audience is a key part of any marketing or PR strategy and, make no mistake, search engine optimization is essentially a marketing and PR activity (albeit somewhat different to some of the more traditional parts of this field). Key questions at this stage (most of which will be directly relevant to your SEO campaign) include:
" Are your customers local, national, or international? How might this change in the future? Is language a barrier to them doing business with you?
" Are your customers business-to-business (B2B), business-to- consumer (B2C), or both? Do you need very different treatments for each segment? (The answer is probably yes.)
" Do your customers vary by demographic? Are they mainly of one sex or age bracket? Do they sit in any particular socioeconomic class?
" Do your customers buy predominantly on price or on quality? Do you want to target upmarket users or appeal to the value end of the market? (Trying to do both at the same time rarely works.)
" Is time a factor for your customers? Do they need to buy quickly? Do they only tend to buy at particular times of the day/week/year or at particular points in their life?
" What is the potential for upselling customers into more expensive products? Or cross-selling them into different product ranges?
" What is the prospect of repeat business? How many of your customers are likely to form a long-term relationship with the business?
Brad undertakes some fairly extensive market research, including telephoning previous customers to find out what motivated them to buy originally and why they did or did not return. He develops a group of five different microsegments who will be the main focus of the new website (and gives each a name, just for fun). These are just two of the five, to give you a flavor:
" Juan Manband. Juan is a business of one, being both an IT contractor and a home-based internet entrepreneur. He has his fingers in lots of different pies and at least eight different business cards in his pocket that carry his name. He orders his business stationery and printing himself. He finds traditional printing firms difficult to deal with as he doesn’t need either logo-design services or large print runs. He is cost conscious but also time poor and tends to trade off the two. He is very willing to order over the internet and do some of the work himself. He does not need his printer to be local.
" Cara Lotte. Cara is personal assistant and office manager to the managing director of a local business with 50 employees. She handles everything from statutory accounts to payroll to stationery and printing. She prefers the personal touch, local suppliers, and people who keep their promises. She would use the computer for research, but is suspicious of using it to buy products. She looks for value (rather than the lowest price), putting a high emphasis on product quality. She would not expect to do any work herself.
In short, Brad has (like most businesses) identified both a local and a national angle to his online presence. He has also proved that there is indeed demand for printing over the internet on small print runs with rapid delivery. This will be his focus.
" Are your customers local, national, or international? How might this change in the future? Is language a barrier to them doing business with you?
" Are your customers business-to-business (B2B), business-to- consumer (B2C), or both? Do you need very different treatments for each segment? (The answer is probably yes.)
" Do your customers vary by demographic? Are they mainly of one sex or age bracket? Do they sit in any particular socioeconomic class?
" Do your customers buy predominantly on price or on quality? Do you want to target upmarket users or appeal to the value end of the market? (Trying to do both at the same time rarely works.)
" Is time a factor for your customers? Do they need to buy quickly? Do they only tend to buy at particular times of the day/week/year or at particular points in their life?
" What is the potential for upselling customers into more expensive products? Or cross-selling them into different product ranges?
" What is the prospect of repeat business? How many of your customers are likely to form a long-term relationship with the business?
Brad undertakes some fairly extensive market research, including telephoning previous customers to find out what motivated them to buy originally and why they did or did not return. He develops a group of five different microsegments who will be the main focus of the new website (and gives each a name, just for fun). These are just two of the five, to give you a flavor:
" Juan Manband. Juan is a business of one, being both an IT contractor and a home-based internet entrepreneur. He has his fingers in lots of different pies and at least eight different business cards in his pocket that carry his name. He orders his business stationery and printing himself. He finds traditional printing firms difficult to deal with as he doesn’t need either logo-design services or large print runs. He is cost conscious but also time poor and tends to trade off the two. He is very willing to order over the internet and do some of the work himself. He does not need his printer to be local.
" Cara Lotte. Cara is personal assistant and office manager to the managing director of a local business with 50 employees. She handles everything from statutory accounts to payroll to stationery and printing. She prefers the personal touch, local suppliers, and people who keep their promises. She would use the computer for research, but is suspicious of using it to buy products. She looks for value (rather than the lowest price), putting a high emphasis on product quality. She would not expect to do any work herself.
In short, Brad has (like most businesses) identified both a local and a national angle to his online presence. He has also proved that there is indeed demand for printing over the internet on small print runs with rapid delivery. This will be his focus.
The first and most obvious question is whether you are selling a product or a service and the degree to which you can fulfill this online. Some service businesses are, by their very nature, intensely offline, local, and personal. For example, a hairdressing business will struggle to cut hair over the internet!
The best place to start is with what I call goal definition. A goal in this context defines a successful outcome from someone visiting your website and is expressed using a verb and a noun. Examples of possible goals include:
" Download a brochure
" Sign up for a newsletter
" Subscribe to a mailing list
" Request a product sample
" Book a sales consultation
" Purchase a product
" Book a service
Users can be grouped into the four areas of the marketing and sales funnel familiar to traditional marketers: a suspect, a prospect, a lead, and a sale.
Suspects are those who may have a (passive) need for your product and service. A suspect becomes a prospect once they have expressed an active interest in what you are offering. A lead is a prospect who meets the criteria of someone who is “ready to buy.” A sale is “closed” when the lead becomes a customer and buys from you. The goals in the list above really mark the progress of a user from one area of the funnel to another. Any searcher who finds and visits your site is a suspect. When they download a brochure they become a prospect. When they book a sales consultation they become a lead. When they purchase a product they become a sale. As such, while a hairdressing business is unlikely to have “receive a haircut” as an online goal, “book a haircut” or “download example hairstyles” might well be part of its overall business proposition.
The most successful online businesses design a series of “customer journeys” through their site, which take a user from entrance to information to goal completion. Each journey begins with a landing page and ends with a so-called money page, where the user completes a goal. Each site may have several (often intersecting) journeys. Later, in the section on analytics (page 224), I will return to customer journeys and introduce you to funnel analysis, which looks at where users drop out of the journey. Through tweaks and improvements, this “journey leakage” can be reduced over time and the conversion of entrance to goal improved. However, for now I will simply reiterate that you must have a clear idea of what your goals are while developing your proposition.
In our case study, Brad begins with a detailed review of the Chambers Print website. At the moment, there is nothing that users can actually buy online. In fact, the only goal a user can complete is to fill out a contact form in the “contact us” section of the site. The form requires the user to enter their email address, so at least it provides a list of prospects.
Furthermore, there are no separate landing pages for the different types of products and services Chambers Print offers. Instead, these are grouped together on a “what we offer” page. Brad decides to construct a series of customer journeys around the key products and services his business currently offers. He also decides to add a new product line whereby users can upload their own artwork or logos to the site, using a series of print templates. In future, people will be able to order business cards, letterheads, compliment slips, invoices, and purchase-order stationery online. There are actually a number of elements of Brad’s proposition that we will revisit in subsequent parts of this guide. However, the key point for now is that simply putting up a brochure of all Chambers Print’s products and services is unlikely to be the best strategy. Brad has some specific and focused aims. By thinking about them now (and refining them) he stands a much better chance of success online.
The best place to start is with what I call goal definition. A goal in this context defines a successful outcome from someone visiting your website and is expressed using a verb and a noun. Examples of possible goals include:
" Download a brochure
" Sign up for a newsletter
" Subscribe to a mailing list
" Request a product sample
" Book a sales consultation
" Purchase a product
" Book a service
Users can be grouped into the four areas of the marketing and sales funnel familiar to traditional marketers: a suspect, a prospect, a lead, and a sale.
Suspects are those who may have a (passive) need for your product and service. A suspect becomes a prospect once they have expressed an active interest in what you are offering. A lead is a prospect who meets the criteria of someone who is “ready to buy.” A sale is “closed” when the lead becomes a customer and buys from you. The goals in the list above really mark the progress of a user from one area of the funnel to another. Any searcher who finds and visits your site is a suspect. When they download a brochure they become a prospect. When they book a sales consultation they become a lead. When they purchase a product they become a sale. As such, while a hairdressing business is unlikely to have “receive a haircut” as an online goal, “book a haircut” or “download example hairstyles” might well be part of its overall business proposition.
The most successful online businesses design a series of “customer journeys” through their site, which take a user from entrance to information to goal completion. Each journey begins with a landing page and ends with a so-called money page, where the user completes a goal. Each site may have several (often intersecting) journeys. Later, in the section on analytics (page 224), I will return to customer journeys and introduce you to funnel analysis, which looks at where users drop out of the journey. Through tweaks and improvements, this “journey leakage” can be reduced over time and the conversion of entrance to goal improved. However, for now I will simply reiterate that you must have a clear idea of what your goals are while developing your proposition.
In our case study, Brad begins with a detailed review of the Chambers Print website. At the moment, there is nothing that users can actually buy online. In fact, the only goal a user can complete is to fill out a contact form in the “contact us” section of the site. The form requires the user to enter their email address, so at least it provides a list of prospects.
Furthermore, there are no separate landing pages for the different types of products and services Chambers Print offers. Instead, these are grouped together on a “what we offer” page. Brad decides to construct a series of customer journeys around the key products and services his business currently offers. He also decides to add a new product line whereby users can upload their own artwork or logos to the site, using a series of print templates. In future, people will be able to order business cards, letterheads, compliment slips, invoices, and purchase-order stationery online. There are actually a number of elements of Brad’s proposition that we will revisit in subsequent parts of this guide. However, the key point for now is that simply putting up a brochure of all Chambers Print’s products and services is unlikely to be the best strategy. Brad has some specific and focused aims. By thinking about them now (and refining them) he stands a much better chance of success online.
Many companies start their online business presence by buying a domain name (a name for their website, often one close to their business name) and building a web page that is really little more than a brochure.
Only later do they turn their mind to optimizing their site for both their audience and the way those in their audience find them. Very few take a long, hard look at what their online competitors are doing first or think about what part of their business works best online. And hardly any revisit their entire business model to consider how it might change to take advantage of what the internet offers. Take it from me, the best way to succeed in search engine optimization is to build it into your business development strategy from the very outset.
More importantly, an SEO campaign must be a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is vital to see it in its broader business context: What sort of visitors will convert well for this business online? Is the ideal visitor budget conscious or seeking luxury items? After all, there is no point in chasing high search volumes only to find that visitors look at one page, then leave the site. And don’t let SEO take over your life you still have to be out there doing business. It’s easy to become
hypnotized by the challenge and forget that SEO is only, at the end of the day, one part of your marketing effort; which is, in itself, only one part of the total business effort required. For these reasons and more, before we turn to search phrases and optimization techniques, this guide considers those fundamental questions of what, who, and where.
Only later do they turn their mind to optimizing their site for both their audience and the way those in their audience find them. Very few take a long, hard look at what their online competitors are doing first or think about what part of their business works best online. And hardly any revisit their entire business model to consider how it might change to take advantage of what the internet offers. Take it from me, the best way to succeed in search engine optimization is to build it into your business development strategy from the very outset.
More importantly, an SEO campaign must be a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is vital to see it in its broader business context: What sort of visitors will convert well for this business online? Is the ideal visitor budget conscious or seeking luxury items? After all, there is no point in chasing high search volumes only to find that visitors look at one page, then leave the site. And don’t let SEO take over your life you still have to be out there doing business. It’s easy to become
hypnotized by the challenge and forget that SEO is only, at the end of the day, one part of your marketing effort; which is, in itself, only one part of the total business effort required. For these reasons and more, before we turn to search phrases and optimization techniques, this guide considers those fundamental questions of what, who, and where.
The first of two steps in the planning and preparation of your SEO campaign, phrases that pay is all about finding the right keyphrases for your business proposition, then deploying them for best effect in your site and campaign.
In this step we look at who your customers are and what you can offer them online. Using the D–A–D (discovery–attractiveness–deployment) model of keyword analysis, we then work out what search phrases they might use to find you – and your competitors.
In this step we look at who your customers are and what you can offer them online. Using the D–A–D (discovery–attractiveness–deployment) model of keyword analysis, we then work out what search phrases they might use to find you – and your competitors.
Tracking and tuning
SEO is not a one-off process but an ongoing competitive struggle. You need to monitor your performance objectively, using reliable data, and feed this back into your campaign. This step shows you how.
" Google Analytics. Discover how to sign up for and use this amazing set of free tools from Google: learn how to monitor your paid and organic search traffic and track goal conversion and campaign return on investment.
" Google Webmaster Tools is the all-in-one interface for managing your crawl, monitoring your search rankings, and checking your backlinks. Google continues to enhance this now invaluable
toolset.
" Other useful tools contains a round up from across the web of tools for tracking PageRank and Traffic Rank, plus how to interpret your own website statistics. The chapter also explains how to use a Google API key, if you have one available.
" Tuning the campaign considers how to use the results of your ongoing monitoring activity to refine your campaign further and tune your site. It also looks at how to monitor what your competitors are up to and learn from them.
The rest of the book is essentially a walk-through of the seven-step approach, illustrated with a case study and punctuated with tools and resources. The longest sections, as you might expect, are those focused on on-page and off-page SEO, where I cover in some depth the key techniques you will need to master.
Making the map
As the web gets bigger, so searches become more locally focused. This innovative step shows you how to exploit this by improving your position for locally qualified searches and on local Google instances. It also covers Google Maps and Google Earth.
" Language optimization. If your site is multilingual, it is important that Google knows this. This chapter shows you how to tag pages and individual text blocks for different languages and how to get ranked in local language searches.
" Geographical optimization. This may surprise you, but users narrow down 35–45% of their searches to sites based in their own country. This chapter covers the key steps required to rank well in these local search instances.
" Google Earth and Google Maps. In this chapter you learn how to rank well in Google Maps and even Google Earth for local searches a vital piece of futureproofing for the increasingly mobile web.
" Priming for local search. Many people add a place name to their regular search query. This chapter shows you how to factor this into your regular search campaign.
Paying for position
While 65% of people never click on paid (or sponsored) search results, 35% do. No comprehensive website promotion campaign is therefore complete without a full evaluation of paid search engine marketing.
" Selecting match drivers involves choosing the location, language, and time you want your ads to be searched in and selecting the phrases you wish to pay for (positive matches) and qualifying words you want to exclude (negative matches).
" Ad text optimization is the biggest challenge in copywriting: compelling a user to click on a link when all you have to work with are 25 characters for a title, 70 for the ad itself, and 35 for the URL. I show you how to achieve this most effectively.
" Landing page optimization. Your cost-per-click and conversion rates both benefit from well-written landing pages that deliver on the promise you made in the ad and channel the user through the rest of your site.
" Bid and campaign management is all about managing your campaigns, budget, day parting, bids, and ad variations to minimize the cost and maximize the return on investment. There’s more to it than you might think!
Landing the links
Priming your pages is only a small part of the battle to get top rankings. By landing the links in a well-managed link-building campaign, you can go from also-ran to world champion and establish both the importance and the relevance of your site.
" How Google ranks. One of the most important sections in the book begins with an exploration of the Google algorithm (how sites are ranked or ordered within search results). It also covers PageRank, TrustRank, and text matching.
" Off-page optimization, the longest part of the book, incorporates strategies to build keyword-rich anchor-text links into your pages from other websites, so that the quality and quantity of your links exceed those of your competitors.
" What’s new in Web 2.0 explores how the emergence of hugely popular social networks has shifted the balance of traffic on the internet. The chapter specifically explains how you can use this to your advantage in your search campaign.
" Avoiding penalties is an introduction to the dark side of SEO: how to avoid using methods that could attract a Google penalty, and how to recover from and reverse a penalty if it happens to you.
Priming your pages
Priming your pages covers the SEO art of page copywriting and asset optimization. This includes deploying your phrases that pay throughout your site and manipulating Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
" How Google stores. Before you can prime your pages you must understand how Google stores your content in its search index. This important chapter also covers the dreaded supplemental index and how to avoid it.
" On-page optimization is all about effective SEO copywriting of metadata, tags, page text, and other on-page elements, so that web pages are keyword rich for search engines but still read well for humans.
" Asset optimization. It is vital also to optimize the images, documents, videos, and other assets on your site. This section shows you how.
" SERPs and snippets outlines how Google displays its search results and how to manipulate the link and the snippet for your own pages, so that web surfers are enticed to click on the result and visit your site.
Courting the crawl
Courting the crawl explains how to help Google to find your pages and index all of them appropriately, through building the right technical foundations and structure for your new or existing website.
"How Google finds. Your first important step in courting the crawl is learning how the Google spider, Googlebot, actually works and how to use sitemaps and robots.txt to initiate, control, and manage its crawl through your site.
"Setting up a new site contains vital information for new webmasters on how and where to host your site and how to select your domain name.
"Managing an existing site explains how to move your site to a new web host and/or move to a new domain without having an adverse impact on your website.
"Site structure and navigation concerns how to structure a site to the right depth and width to facilitate an effective crawl. It includes the optimization of your directory structure, file names, and file extensions.
Phrases that pay
Think of SEO as like cooking a meal. Keywords and keyphrases are your ingredients. Discovering phrases that pay is all about finding the right keyphrases for your business proposition, then deploying them for best effect in your site and campaign.
"Proposition development is about working out who your customers or audience are; what you can sell or promote to them online; how they will find your site; and what will convince them to do business with you.
"Keyword discovery is the first of three steps in my D–A–D keyword analysis technique. In discovery, you generate the longest list of possible search words and phrases your customers might use, with your competitors as a guide.
"Keyword attractiveness is the second D–A–D step and involves balancing keyword popularity and keyword competitiveness to determine the overall opportunity, or attractiveness, attached to each word or phrase.
"Keyword deployment is the third and final D–A–D step, where you use the principles of prominence, proximity, and density to work out how to chain, split, and splice together keywords into phrases that pay.
"Keyword attractiveness is the second D–A–D step and involves balancing keyword popularity and keyword competitiveness to determine the overall opportunity, or attractiveness, attached to each word or phrase.
"Keyword deployment is the third and final D–A–D step, where you use the principles of prominence, proximity, and density to work out how to chain, split, and splice together keywords into phrases that pay.
Setting the scene
84% of searchers never make it past the bottom of page two of search engine results. Just think about this for a moment. Imagine the web is one giant city, with stores scattered through it. Having your site in the top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town. Your footfall in a major mall is massive, with people coming in and out of your store all the time. On the web, a top position on Google has just the same effect.
Recent research has shown that the power of a top ranking is even more extreme than the 84% statistic suggests. Apparently, the nearer to the number one position your business gets, the greater the chances that you will actually convert your visitors to sales. It’s almost as if web surfers associate a top position on Google with a quality brand. A business very local to me (and dear to my heart) is the Teddington Cheese in southwest London. This unassuming little shop is rather off the beaten track for lovers of fine cheese. It isn’t even on Main Street in Teddington. However, it does sell really excellent cheese from all over Europe and some aficionados come from miles around to take home a slice or two.
What many people shopping there don’t know, however, is that the Teddington Cheese won a UK eCommerce Award and sells its cheeses to people all over the world. How did it achieve this? Well, one reason is that it is in the top 10 on Google for the search term “cheese.”
I find the Teddington Cheese story inspiring. Although the web is less of a wild frontier than it used to be, there is still a place for a David seeking to take on the Goliaths of world commerce. You too can beat the big boys and afford that prime location right on Main Street, WWW. The keys are great product, sound service, niche focus, great content, and good search engine optimization or SEO – getting your site to the top of the search engine rankings. I can’t help you much with the first four, but I can certainly help with the fifth.
There is a dark side to this heavy preference among consumers for a top-ranking company. More than once I have been contacted by businesses in desperation, who used to have a top 10 ranking but no longer do. I remember, in particular, a financial advisory business that used to rank top five for a wide range of loan search terms, and had grown from a one-man-band to a sizeable business in just a few years as a consequence. However, following a change in the Google algorithm (the way the rankings are calculated), its site had fallen out of the top 20, probably never to return, and it was ultimately forced to let all its staff go.
The business was up against some very big banks with millions to spend, so regretfully I concluded there was little I could do (certainly within the much depleted budget available). Still, I will remember that desperation for a long time. Most problematically, the business had little substance to it beyond its web presence and had done nothing to build the capital or industry relationships necessary to sustain it through difficult times. I tell this cautionary tale for a particular reason. I want you to remember that the web is only one channel for a sound business (albeit a hugely important and growing one) and that search algorithms are subject to constant change. Just because you’re in the top 10 one week doesn’t mean you’ll always be there. Your competitors don’t stand still. In fact, you have no god-given (or Google-given) right to a particular position. The search engines – and the traffic they bring – are fickle beasts. Forget this at your peril.
However, I do want you to be more excited than scared. I am passionate about the power of the internet and the potential it has to transform business, politics, and our entire society. As I have said, 40% of all sales could be online by 2020 and, with the help of this book, your store could be right on Main Street for millions of customers right across the world.
Recent research has shown that the power of a top ranking is even more extreme than the 84% statistic suggests. Apparently, the nearer to the number one position your business gets, the greater the chances that you will actually convert your visitors to sales. It’s almost as if web surfers associate a top position on Google with a quality brand. A business very local to me (and dear to my heart) is the Teddington Cheese in southwest London. This unassuming little shop is rather off the beaten track for lovers of fine cheese. It isn’t even on Main Street in Teddington. However, it does sell really excellent cheese from all over Europe and some aficionados come from miles around to take home a slice or two.
What many people shopping there don’t know, however, is that the Teddington Cheese won a UK eCommerce Award and sells its cheeses to people all over the world. How did it achieve this? Well, one reason is that it is in the top 10 on Google for the search term “cheese.”
I find the Teddington Cheese story inspiring. Although the web is less of a wild frontier than it used to be, there is still a place for a David seeking to take on the Goliaths of world commerce. You too can beat the big boys and afford that prime location right on Main Street, WWW. The keys are great product, sound service, niche focus, great content, and good search engine optimization or SEO – getting your site to the top of the search engine rankings. I can’t help you much with the first four, but I can certainly help with the fifth.
There is a dark side to this heavy preference among consumers for a top-ranking company. More than once I have been contacted by businesses in desperation, who used to have a top 10 ranking but no longer do. I remember, in particular, a financial advisory business that used to rank top five for a wide range of loan search terms, and had grown from a one-man-band to a sizeable business in just a few years as a consequence. However, following a change in the Google algorithm (the way the rankings are calculated), its site had fallen out of the top 20, probably never to return, and it was ultimately forced to let all its staff go.
The business was up against some very big banks with millions to spend, so regretfully I concluded there was little I could do (certainly within the much depleted budget available). Still, I will remember that desperation for a long time. Most problematically, the business had little substance to it beyond its web presence and had done nothing to build the capital or industry relationships necessary to sustain it through difficult times. I tell this cautionary tale for a particular reason. I want you to remember that the web is only one channel for a sound business (albeit a hugely important and growing one) and that search algorithms are subject to constant change. Just because you’re in the top 10 one week doesn’t mean you’ll always be there. Your competitors don’t stand still. In fact, you have no god-given (or Google-given) right to a particular position. The search engines – and the traffic they bring – are fickle beasts. Forget this at your peril.
However, I do want you to be more excited than scared. I am passionate about the power of the internet and the potential it has to transform business, politics, and our entire society. As I have said, 40% of all sales could be online by 2020 and, with the help of this book, your store could be right on Main Street for millions of customers right across the world.