The purpose of driving traffic to your online business is to get customers. Once a prospect lands on your site, you still have to convert that prospect into a buyer.

The number of small businesses in the United States totals about 25 million. Because most of these have a local trading territory, relatively few advertise online. Online advertising reaches the masses of the Internet world, whether they are local or not.

Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are critically important to online businesses. You can spend every penny you have on a website, but it will all be for nothing if nobody knows your site is there.

Not long ago, the term 'business model' was not exactly on the tip of everyone's tongue. Then, in the early to mid-1990s, 'business model' became a catchphrase that described how a company makes money or saves money.

I ended up buying business.com for $150,000 because I wanted to make it a magazine. It would have been a 'Time'-type magazine: how to do business on the Internet. And I was offered a lot of money for that domain. I played two buyers against each other.

In direct navigation, users type exactly what they are looking for in the browser's web address field. This could be the exact domain name or web address. Millions of people do this, emphasizing the need for on- and off-line marketing and branding.

Traditional local media are adding local search capabilities to their sites so they can share in the local search traffic and ad revenues in the local markets they serve.