|
By Patrick Gavin, Inc.
When a business decides to market a product, the location of the
retail outlet can be a deciding factor in the success or failure
of the business. No matter how good your product, price, or brand,
if you were to set up shop in the middle of the Sahara Desert, you
would undoubtedly fail.
On the flip side of that coin, many businesses prosper even with
poor brands and uncompetitive pricing and second rate products simply
because they have set up shop in a high traffic area.
Search engine optimization is location. And like
they say in retail business, it’s all about location, location,
location.
How many booksellers can one U.S. city sustain? In New York City
alone, there are thousands. All those booksellers can co-exist because,
for the most part, each targets a relatively small demographic area
- the immediate vicinity of the retail location.
When you go online, however, you are entering one geographic location.
It’s a city called the Internet. And just like in the offline
world, location matters. But there’s one big difference: Only
ten websites can inhabit the top ten spots in the search results.
For years now, many booksellers have tried to compete with Amazon.com
and Barnes and Noble. But when you search for Books, you see Amazon
in the first place, and Barnes and Noble second. Why would any consumer
feel the need to go beyond that?
If your website isn’t in the top of the search results, for
all intents and purposes you do not exist online. It is as if you
had set up shop in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
Want a retail spot in the extremely high traffic Times Square are
of New York? It’ll set you back $50 to $60 per square foot.
Yet many retailers find that it is worth every penny.
Effective search engine placement is not cheap. But it is often
worth every penny and more to get your website the kind of traffic
that even those Times Square retailers would envy.
Search engine placement is not the end-all, be-all of the dot com
business model. You’ll still need to build a brand that consumers
can trust, along with a product that consumers need, but it is the
first step. Without location, you’re demographic simply doesn’t
exist.
|
