How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you'd hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site?

If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online business.

Misconception #1: If you put up a Web site, people will come. Regretfully, this is far from the truth. Competition is fierce on the Internet, and you must learn how to compete in order to have a successful online business. Putting up a Web site is the first step, but doing nothing more will ensure your site's failure.

Misconception #2: Amateur promotion will render professional results. Many people believe that they can purchase a handy dandy software program that will submit their sites to 999 search engines and directories, and their promotion efforts are over. The truth of the matter is, the majority of the traffic to most Web sites comes from the major search engines and directories, so submitting to 990 other ones is simply a waste of time and won't bring you any success.

Misconception #3: Submitting your site to the major search engines and directories is all you need to do. Wrong. Think of it this way: there are 10 search results per page for most of the engines. Most people won't go through any more than three pages of search results before giving up and trying another search. So, only the top 30 rankings really matter. If your site is #3,429 out of two million results, how much traffic do you think you'll get?

Misconception #4: META tags are the key to success with the search engines. Truthfully, very few of the major engines even look at META tags any more. So, sticking META tags on your pages won't bring you traffic and sales.

Misconception #5: The key to success on the Web is achieving top 10 rankings for keywords that are important to your business. This way of thinking is outdated. Instead, the key to success on the Web is bringing in extremely targeted traffic that converts to sales. You can have all the #1 rankings in the world, but if the rankings don't convert to traffic that ultimately converts to sales, your Web site will never be a success.

If you're ready to activate your Web site for success, why not take advantage of simple but powerful insiders' strategies that mean genuine business. The good news is that you can learn these strategies through step-by-step, personal instruction at the Ultimate SEO Mastery Workshop being held in New Orleans on September 9-11 at the Royal Orleans Hotel. For more information, or to learn of future workshops, visit http://www.searchengineworkshops.com or contact Robin Nobles at robin@searchengineworkshops.com.

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy's training site to learn more (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

robin@searchengineworkshops.com