Online small business is a marathon, not a sprint

Image courtesy of Julian Mason

Visiting forums, blogs and other social websites, I see many people expecting their online small business to hit the top of search engines in unreasonable time frames. So when their website isn't naturally collecting 1000 visitors per day in two months, they become disheartened and lose faith in what they are doing.

My advice, keep going and change your small business website mindset from a sprint to a marathon.

The sprint mindset is not the fault of those with unreasonable expectations, it is the fault of marketing campaigns promoting top search engine listings within a week. It's a technicality that some companies use to fool people into using their online business services. The website will be ranked at the top of search engines, but it will be for terms that may not be searched by many people.

Search engine initiation

The fact is, a major contributor to search engine ranking is time and it is out of our control. For the top search terms in Google, there are only ten positions available on the first page so the reality is that 99.99% of businesses won't reach it.

But do you know what? It doesn't matter.

For hundreds of other terms that people search for frequently, you can reach the top three pages or even the top page. That being said, it doesn't happen overnight. It is a rather lengthy process dictated by the search engines as a form of initiation.

Thousands of websites are created everyday and the majority disappear in less than a year due to poor results. You can rank better than sites that have existed longer than yours but you need to demonstrate to the search engines that your site:

• Clearly follows its topic/niche/genre
• Provides quality judged by the length of time visitors stay
• Is credible, as measured by the other websites linking to yours

This is extremely difficult to achieve in a few short months without a massive marketing budget. With a low budget, it can take upwards of a year to receive solid traffic daily.

Prepare for the marathon

For those just starting out with an online business, prepare for the long haul by developing a marathon mindset. It will take time to build but if you do a few small things consistently the results will come.

If you have been running your online small business for quite some time and know you are doing the right things, hang in there and keep pushing. The time will come when everything falls in to place and your traffic takes off. It is inevitable.

If you are not sure what you should be doing to build your website, contact us and we will provide you with some free advice about what you can be doing to improve your current situation.