The answer to this question really depends on you and your go to market strategy. Just like your typical Mom and Pop or Brick and Mortar offline business, the key to any businesses' success comes down to advertising and marketing. Without advertising or promoting, you will fail. You need a marketing plan to succeed.
One important key distinction. At least in a local offline business, people still see it or drive or walk buy and you may get some business there. However, this is where people usually fail on the Internet online business aspect. With a website, you also require marketing, advertising and promoting. However, there is no walk up crowd or drive by shopper. You can spend a ton of money on a flashy casino like site with bells and whistles to attract web surfers, but the reality is even if your main product was FREE GOLD and you were standing outside of your online shop with a sign too, if you do not market the site correctly, you gold is worthless as nobody ever knows you exist. Zero traffic, zero sales. However, if you follow the protocol correctly and keep it going, the Internet is so vast, it can make you a lot of money fast as once traffic flows and word catches on, your site becomes viral.
So, the million dollar question is what is the proper protocol to drive traffic to your website or promote it and advertise it so its visible. There are a couple points to make here. There are few main types of online advertising that will play into your success. One is of course SEO or search engine optimization which if done carefully, with good research of content, keywords, and constant updating where value is provided, can bring you a great deal of organic traffic from the Googles, yahoos, and Bing's of the world. The key to SEO, is optimizing your site to match that of your target market. Its one thing to find the right niche but its a little more in depth to optimize your site to best reach that market via the search engine. This is where your strategy of domain name, meta tags, keywords, and keyword rich content that is UNIQUE comes in and we call SEO.
The other main type of traffic is of course advertising, word of mouth and back-linking. SEO is technical marketing so to speak as you can do SEO and do nothing else and if the search engines latch on you get free organic traffic. The second type requires YOU. This is where you advertise you site by back linking to sites that you either do guest blogging, article marketing, banner advertising etc. Think of your site as an island. If you have no way for people too get to it, you are doomed. So, what you do. This is the easiest way to explain it.
Build bridges to it and other modes of transportation. Like airplanes, boats, helicopters, bridges. Each represents a advertising method that will link your island, your website, to land giving willing web visitors a way to reach your island. Again, these are your typical advertising methods,
Banner ads - links back to your site
Article directories - content with keyword links to your site
Forums - post signatures with links to your site
Email marketing
PPC ads or pay per click
Classified ads
Solo ads
Etc
The more YOU do to promote YOUR site, the more you will be seen and the more traffic you will get. This can be accomplished without the Googles of the world, but if you want the best of both traffic, organic and referral, then SEO and your own go to market promoting and advertising is recommended.
Do this and do it right and consistently, you will be seen on Google and that is just the tip of it.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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