The New World Order

I have no doubt that this article is going to shake some people up. And I won't lie, that's my intention, with good reason. The world we live in today, referring to the Internet, is much different from the one we lived in even just a few years ago. If we're going to succeed with a home based business IN this world, we have to understand what we're up against first. I am going to attempt to give you an idea of just what that is.

Let's start with something that very few people even think about because it's happened so subtly. If you've been on the Internet for a while, you probably remember that back in the Wild West days, the people who were running businesses online were a bunch of no name mavericks. Eventually, these people went on to become quite well known. But they weren't at the start. And that was pretty much all that was online.

Today is a different story. Take a look around. Big corporations are now sharing the Internet with us. It isn't just Ma and Pa Kettle with little home brewed web sites competing for a share of the online profits. You've got everybody from AT&T to Zenith selling their products online. In fact, I can't think of a major corporation today that doesn't have a web presence.

So the competition has not only gotten larger in numbers, it's also gotten greater in power. I don't know about you, but if I'm trying to sell watches online, I don't think I really want to go head to head with Seiko.

And this problem isn't only confined to physical goods. You've got some very large companies providing services online as well.

In short, the easy ride is over.

And if that wasn't enough (the increased competition) there is another part of the New World Order that is making it even more difficult for the little guy to make a buck online. For the reason, we need only look to the big "G". I'm talking about Google.

Like it or not, Google pretty much runs the Internet as far as what you find and how easy you find it. If you're on the consumer end of this, you're happy because hopefully you're finding the most relevant results when you do a search for a product.

But what if you're on the other end of the Google algorithm?

To answer that question, you first need to understand how things used to be and how things are now. Let's begin with how you used to be able to get your site ranked high on the SERPs and how those tactics either no longer work or aren't as effective.

Back in the good old days, you could churn out some God awful article of nothing but garbage but sufficiently keyword stuffed and submit it to article directories and get tons of visitors to your site for nothing more than having relevant keywords. You could also buy or bribe other sites for links to your site and Google would reward you with a high placement.

Then Google caught on and said "no more." Today, article directories no longer have the same weight in the SERPs because of all the crap that used to be submitted to them. If you've relied on articles for traffic, you've probably noticed your traffic has significantly gone down. In addition to this, Google now recognizes "artificially created" links and discounts them. So all those links that you have are no longer producing the results that they used to.

This is not some crazy "the sky is falling" Internet marketer telling you this. This is somebody who has been at this for over 9 years; somebody who has seen this first hand. I myself have had to drastically change how I do things in regard to my own business. My articles, for one, are more than twice as long as they used to be. Why? Because good content still rises to the top.

In short, Google is finished and fed up with all the garbage online and are doing their best to get rid of it or at least make it so that nobody can find it.

So, we as businesses, have two choices. We can continue to go on the way we have (assuming that our efforts are no longer working and need changing) and get the same bad results OR we can play the game that Google wants us to play and clean up our act.

It's not a hard choice. At least it's not a hard choice if you want to run a successful business. There are all sorts of rules, written and otherwise. The written rules, such as having to file a tax return if you live in the US, are easy to follow. It's the unwritten rules that give people the most problems. Sure, there is no law that says you HAVE to write good articles or get your backlinks naturally because other sites actually LOVE your content. But if you accept that fact that adapting that philosophy will get you better results and actually implement it, you'll be working WITH the system instead of fighting against it.

Does this mean that you might have to work a little harder, maybe writing a little longer and doing a little honest public relations to get your sites to be more popular? It does. It also means that your business will ultimately have a stronger foundation.

Think about it. Do you REALLY think Amazon has to bribe people for links or write crappy articles to get traffic? Isn't Amazon one of the FIRST places you think of when you want to buy certain items like music or video games or even health supplies? I can't even begin to tell you what my Amazon bill looks like each year. I practically live there. And nobody had to bribe me to do it. And I didn't have to read some crappy article either.