If you want to have success with an online business there is one thing you absolutely must have. Without this piece of the business pie nothing else matters. You can have a great looking website with graphics and killer sales copy but it won't help you a bit. You can have a great product with a killer offer but it won't matter. If you don't have the life blood of a great web business nothing else matters. What is the most important aspect of any business? Customers. If you don't have customers you don't have anything.



Customers are the fuel that drives any business. Everything must be centered on getting customers if you want to make money online or in any business.

When you have an online business the customers are known as traffic. This traffic is the people who visit your website or blog. Most internet marketing authorities agree that the vast majority of your efforts should be focused on getting more traffic to your site. If you want to know how important traffic is this ratio may be enlightening. You should spend about 10% of your time on the website and 90% your time on getting buyers to visit your site.

There are two types of traffic on the web. Social traffic and buying traffic. Social traffic is comprised of people just looking around. These people are known as tire kickers. They are not ready to buy anything. The social traffic is notoriously hard to make any money off of because they are not in the buying mood.

Buying traffic is also known as search traffic. Search traffic is comprised of people who are looking for a solution to a problem and they are willing to pay. This is the type of traffic you want to target because they already have their credit cards and are ready to buy a solution.

There are two methods to tapping into this buying traffic. You can get listed in the search engine result pages for free or you can buy ads on the search engine result pages with PPC or Pay Per Click. Both of these methods work but I like the free method best because it's FREE.

Google has the largest search network so that is the one to target. If you want to get a lot of traffic from Google you have to be listed in one of the top spots when someone searches for what you are selling. For example, if you are selling “Red Dog Collars” you want your site to show up at the top of the page when someone searches for this term. A term like this is known as a keyword phrase.

So how do you get to the top of the search page? You make Google realize that you are the authority for “Red Dog Collars.” First you build a site about the subject. Then you spend all the rest of your time proving to Google that you are the expert. You do this by getting other websites to link to you saying you have great information on “Red Dog Collars.” These links are known as backlinks and they are like gold when it comes to getting ranked higher on the search engine page. Every time a website links to you with the keyword “Red Dog Collars” that is another vote to Google that you are the expert and so Google is more likely to send searcher to your website. At the end of the day the person with the most “Red Dog Collars” is going to be at the top of the search page and people are going to be more likely to visit that site.

About 40% of the people who search for a term will visit the first site listed in the search result page. So you can see that being in the top spot is very important. These searchers are usually people who are looking to buy a solution to their problem. Learning how to get to the top of the search page results is one of the most important skills you can develop to get more buying traffic to your site.