search engine optimization , search engine , small business

By: Mike Banks Valentine

The great promise of the web was that vast worldwide market

where you could reach millions without doing traditional

sales. Put up a killer web site and reel in the big fish!

Or simply scoop up millions of tiny fish in that big "net".

Voila! No sales necessary! Now it's only spammers that fall

for that as the rest of us realize we must sell to succeed.

How many ideas have succeeded on their own merits - without

promotion, marketing and sales? What products have taken the

world by storm when no one knew about them? Why do authors

go on book-signing tours, actors make the rounds of the talk

show circuit, and major companies spend millions on trade

shows? They launch monstrous public relations campaigns and

give away tchotchke's with their logo emblazoned on them.

Public awareness does not come cheap or easy. The sales

process is a necessary evil that many small business people

abhor (and then they die) or embrace (and then they prosper.)

Innovators and inventors must seek venture capital and sell

their concept to investors. Why do we recoil from the sales

process if the task falls to us as independent business

owners? We look to gurus of marketing, P.R. and promotion to

rescue us from this task and throw money at advertising to

avoid doing sales ourselves.

Riches are reaped from multi-level marketers recruiting vast

hoards of amateur sales people through pep-rally conventions

offering "residual sales" without further effort by building

a "downline", another name for sales staff. Then you can ease

off, live on the sales efforts of hundreds of new "recruits".

The product is secondary and the business opportunity is key

to building that sales staff, so you can reach the top of the

pyramid and sip tropical drinks on the beach while "they" sell.

MLM seeks salespersons whose goal is to avoid selling by

recruiting others to do it for them. Affiliate programs have

proliferated on the web, recruiting others to sell for them.

But in the end the key is sales, sales and more sales, no

matter whether the business model is direct sales or through

selling the idea to others of selling for you. Sales is key.

Try search engine optimization. Is this another approach

of seeking sales without effort or expense? No, you must

still do the sales while "it" delivers the targeted traffic.

SEO brings you folks interested in what you sell by helping

your web site communicate effectively with search engine

spiders. You must still give each of those visitors your

best sales pitch by communicating why they should consider

buying your product after SEO helps them to find your site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) delivers potential buyers for

your product or service. Eyeballs for your sales pitch are

its specialty. You create a needed product or service and SEO

brings you people interested in what you sell so you can sell

to them. You still do the selling, but now you have visitors

to offer your sales pitch to. Convince them after SEO brings

them to you and you will make sales, make lots of sales and

you will be successful.

SEO delivers prospects for your sale.

Mike Valentine does Search Engine Placement for the Small

Business http://website101.com/Search_Engine_Positioning

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