1. Are not prepared to spend money on search engine marketing. The majority of goods or services that are sellable over the internet will now have a lot of competition for the large amount of business that it can offer you. Merely having a website up and running, no matter how professional it looks, will not provide you with a piece of the action as searchers typically will stop looking when they find what they are looking for, ie on page 1 of the Search Engine Placement results. Now, if you do not make use of optimization to make certain that you achieve that page one result you may as well dismiss any new custom coming from that direction as the searcher will just make their purchase without even moving away from the page one list.
2. If you have a new and unique item to sell. The difficulty here is that the searching public are the only ones who can point the search engine on what they need. The internet is so vast and has so many elements to it that without proper, recognised keywords, searches can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. So if the searcher is not aware that your product exists then there is no way they will be typing it into the search engines. You would find that you would attain page one results very easily as there will be no competition, but of course there is no competition, because there are no searchers.
The best way to cope with this kind of product is to market it differently from the start, advertise it in other ways first. Possibly by Trade shows, TV ads etc. This will raise consciousness and then the website and Online Marketing may prove useful after that as you have created your own keyword from the initial promotion work.
3. If you only deliver your goods or services to a small local community rather than selling nationally and internationally. The issue with Online Marketing is that the market is so huge, it’s actually the whole world. You wouldn’t think a problem, in fact it sounds fantastic. But if you are not ready for the massive influx of business or enquiries that can come when search engine optimization kicks in your business can be inundated. So ideally not only will you be able to make the most of all the extra enquiries by selling your product or service to them, you’ll also be ready for the increase. If you can’t do either of these things you could be wasting you money and effort by going down the Online Marketing road.
4. If your production is almost at capacity already. As we have already seen the web can have a dramatic effect on your trading, but this depends on your business being able to handle increased production or delivery of service. If this is not the situation then spend would first be better placed in planning for future increases. As long as the product will sell over the internet, and you are prepared to spend money on the services of a good Website Optimization Company then the trade will come in. So before starting down that path consider your location, staff numbers and machinery, understand what you will require for growth and have a plan of how to get there. Then when the search engine optimization does kick in you will be ready to take the best advantage of it.