Despite the billions of websites on the Internet creating what would appear to be an extremely convoluted, competitive marketplace, the net is actually very open and accessible for anyone. Where it would be impossible to set up in competition with a company such as Marks & Spencer’s on the high street, designing, developing, launching and promoting a website to compete with the biggest names in business is within the grasp of us all, even the fourteen-year-old kid working out of his bedroom on the Wirral.
You don’t need millions of pounds to create a website and compete against the largest websites on the Internet; you just need the right niche, the right know how and a strong SEO strategy. The Internet, and the ultimate democracy that is Google, allows lone bloggers to stand toe-to-toe with major companies, such as the incident a few weeks ago where Andrew Sharman frightened the life out of holiday company Thomson.
The Internet represents now what America used to represent with its American Dream, meaning that someone could start from nothing and make a fortune. If bloggers can come from nothing, set up websites, rank within Google and earn enough money to live a comfortable life, imagine how well a company with a sizable online marketing budget could do. How that budget is spent is of course paramount, as spending tens of thousands (or more in some cases) on a website with no concept of how the site will be perceived by Google is like throwing money down the drain.
Yet despite this, many companies still employ web developers to build their websites while remaining blissfully ignorant of some of the most basic of SEO concepts.
It’s for this reason that lone bloggers, and that fourteen-year-old on the Wirral, are able to challenge the major blue chip companies at what should really be their own game. It’s not their own game though, it’s the game of the Internet marketers, and it’s a game with many rules (and many more fake rules just to throw people off the scent).
The Internet is wide open; you just have to know how to access it.
