Do you have one of the 175,000 of businesses which just created a website that gets no traffic? Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions about Internet marketing is that just having an online presence will bring you people who become paying clients - but that just doesn't seem to work out that way. An unfortunate many believe in what I call "Field of Dreams" web marketing, thinking "If you build it, they will come."

Are you wondering:

• Why does internet marketing seem useful for one group of businesses, but not others?



• How long will it be until my website starts showing up in search results?



• When will [my web site] begin making money?

Is my site even listed in Google?

Just because you put up a site, doesn't instantly result that Google will list your site. You can see if Google has indexed your site by looking on Google for "site:mydomain.tld", for example, "site:Envision-Web-Promotion.com". If your query comes up with any results in the slightest, Google has found and crawled your site. If your search results come back with the notorious "Your search did not match any documents", they've never heard of you ? they just don't know that your site exists at all.

How do I get my site into Google?

Sure, you could "submit" your website to Google, but that will put you in a massive queue of websites asking to get added. The absolutely most effective way to get added fast is to get a link to your site ? somewhere. Once someone links to your site, and Google finds that link, your site will be queued for fast-indexing.

So how do you get that first link?

There are a number of ways to do this, without spending a dime. You can:

• Have a friend set up a link to your site,



• Fill out a guestbook entry and include a link to your site,



• Post a reply on someone's web log with a link to your site,



• Set up your own blog on Blog.com and link to your site,



• Start an account on a social bookmarking web site like Digg and create a bookmark to your site,



• Author a free reprint article and post it to SearchWarp, EZineArticles, or Free-Reprint-Articles.com

The faster Google checks the place where your link was entered, the sooner Google will find that someone out there links to you. Some web sites are scanned as seldom as once every few months, other places are checked a couple of times an hour. The best ways to get into Google are via social bookmarking services or article marketing.

If you can get to your site logs, sift through them for hits by an agent called GoogleBot. This is the bot that Google uses to search the internet. After you discover that Google has hit a few pages of your site, it won't be long until your site: search starts showing results. But, that's just the tip of the iceberg?

Okay, so when do I start getting visitors?

Once your site is indexed, why doesn't it come up when I look for it? If you read through every page of search results, you'll find that site is near the end of results for any search but your company name. And if that company name is fairly widespread, you're probably at the of that list, too.

Playing in the Sandbox?

Your site will remain in a special place that dubbed} "the sandbox". Even [if your site is exceptionally] well linked, appreciated, and built - it just doesn't appear on Google until it has matured satisfactorily to Google to know that your site is not a spam-site.

How long your site spends in the sandbox depends on many aspects and Google won't spill the beans. The essential thing to bear in mind is that Internet marketing is a long-haul effort. There aren't any short cuts you can take to outthink Google. They do their best to ensure that searchers are given the best search results. Making your site endure the sandbox is Google's mechanism for meeting surfers needs and retaining their position as the best search engine.