Build it and they will come? Pt 1

Build it and they will come... or so the saying goes... Unfortunately in the world of the web, build it and they will come is only true if you build it in a way that they can't help but be magnitized to your site. Previously on the internet, the only way you could do this was tomake your website compatible for the search engine, and to optimize it for the search engines, and then either market it using other people's sites, via link exchanging, or building the links on the web in the right places so your wsite would rank high in the search engines for the right keywords. However, the internet has changed. We are no longer in an primative phase of the internet, we are in "web 2.0". We make the web, we let the bookmarking sites (the "new search engines") know that we like the site, we tell the bookmarking sites and everyone else using it to remember this site, and let other people know it's worth checking out.Now there still is over 50% of the traffic comming in through regular search engines, particularly google, yahoo, and msn, but it's getting more and more popular to search "social bookmarking sites". Sites like stumbleupon.com where you can press a button to randomly be taken to a site that the community has reccomended, as well as search for sites that people of similar interest like, or even your group of friends that like the site. If someone just adds all of the sites they want people to go to, and tries to "spam" these social bookmarking sites, the community will let the bookmarking community know that it's not a site they reccomend. and soon the spammer's site is banished. Previously you would have to wait until someone decided to file a complaint to google or the search engine... and it could take 2 or 3 months, sometimes more until they actually do something about it, and by then, the spammer would just have a new domain, a new site ranking high in the search engine using their "black hat" methods. Aside from sites like stumble upon, there's sites like Digg.com. The more "diggs" a site gets, the higher it ranks in the bookmarking's form of a search engine. You let other people know you "digg" the site by clicking a button. Then there's sites like technorati.com where you can use keywords to let people know what your site is about. Then there's squidoo lens to orginize information, to put up lists that people among the squidoo comnunity can rank. YOu can make posts, put up video etc. Then of course there's Myspace, the huge social community. Although people don't use this as much to find new sites and tell each other, you can develop friends, send out messages to your entire list of friends, create groups, and of course submit videos, or put videos on your "myspace page". In addition you can promote your band, send out classfied adds, tell people about events. Facebook is very similar. Of course then there is youtube.com, a social network of people posting and watching videos, as well as writing comments, sending messages, etc. People can easily copy and paste the link to embed it in their site, and people can click a couple buttons and email the video to their friends. Now since google has bought it, they are comming up with an add that goes on the bottom of the video, that you can use just like adsense to generate revenue from.

But it's a new world wide web... A web for the community, by the community. If you want to survive the world of web 2.0 as a marketer or web owner, you're going to have to make several adaptations. You're going to have to learn to intigrate various platforms to allow people to use these tools on your site. You're going to want to make it very easy for your users to tell entire communities that they like your site.

Web 2.0 has arrived, and if you want to not more than just survive, you're going to have to learn the tactics required to not only do well in the search engines, but do well in these social bookmarking sites, and other web 2.0 material. Then you will not only survive... but thrive