I am pretty sure by now that if you know anything about search engine optimization then you know that CONTENT is KING!  If content is king, then I promise you that LINK BUILDING is QUEEN.  Yes, you heard me correctly, link building is critically important and without it, unless you are in some really small niche market (like water balloon slingshots or something) then you will need to have incoming links to your site.

Before I dig into either, lets remember that the whole point of building a website and offering products or ebooks or information or videos or tutorials or whatever it is you plan on selling, is to make money.  The only way to really make money online is to have people find your site.  If they cannot find you, its gonna be impossible to sell anything…does this make sense?  You can spend thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars (I have seen it done) on the most beautiful custom built website but if noone can find it when they are looking for what you offer, you will not make a dime.  I see this over and over and over again. 

The other thing I see a lot of are the business owners that task the building of their website to either a marketing company or their so called Marketing Director or even their IT department.  This is such bad news in so many ways.  Honestly, if the President of a company does not take part in this process, 9 times out of 10, they don't care if their site makes them money.  They are merely keeping up with their golf buddies so the next time one of them says, "I have a website for my business, do you have one?", the other guy can respond with a resounding "YES!" and be proud.  If the guy ever asks the real question of "Does your website make you any money?", I can promise you he will say "I don't know".  He may even go back into work on Monday and round up his team and ask them about it all.  Either way, this is the worst kind of business owner.  They are in their comfort zone.  Don't get me wrong, they are probably doing extremely well and have been for many many years and may even be making millions doing things the old fashioned way but that does not mean they could not be doing better.  The problem however is the Marketing Director or outside Marketing Company or their IT Dept could care less if the company makes money from the website.  They are just glad they have a job to goto everyday.

If someone were to really sit down with the President of the company and give him some real stats and some real information on how powerful the web can be, he could probably double his business.  Most of these types are just to busy or to lazy to get the help they really need.  This is why the Internet is such a growing and evolving place to be.  There are literally thousands of new businesses popping up every day from part timers working at night and they are capitalizing on these Presidents that just don't get it.  Seriously, even huge companies like Calloway golf, for example, are getting their clocks cleaned by a small mom and pop Internet business that know how to run an online business.  There are smaller Internet business owners selling uniforms and such and killing the monster companies like Aramark.  This happens all day every day and you can do it too.

In my next post, I will really start getting into what search engines really wanna see and show you some examples.  Its really not that hard once you know what to look for.  Stay tuned…