After a long day in the office, again being the one that closes the windows and switches of the lights before locking the door to the office, he stepped in his car and drove home. No traffic at this hour. That was an advantage. The business was going good, but he couldn't buy that house in the mountains he always dreamed of. Neither could he take 4 vacations per year, though that may have been because he loved to work more than doing nothing looking at some white mountain tops. He knew it,... the success he was looking for was in sight, but always seemed to stay at the same distance, never getting any closer to it.

"Get a website!" they said: "It will grow your business to unimagined heights." After lots of doubts, because what did he know about websites, he decided to go for it. He hired the service of a web designer company and for the small sum of $5000 he got a website that even could accept credit card payments.

He had seen those websites. Thousands of products online, and they looked like they sell a lot. When his website finally was ready after months of delays, he sat down at his desk at home on a sunny Sunday morning. Opened up his Firefox browser, because everybody said it was much better than Internet Explorer, though he never really understood why since all the buttons look different and some are even in different places. There he looked at it; His very own website and online store. He didn't have thousands of products, less than 100 actually, but still it had taken one of his employees an eternity to add them all, including all the options and promotions. His day dream was great, while he stared at his screen; Imagining all the people that were checking out his products at this very moment and some may even end up at the check-out page. Now he could reach the whole nation, even Alaska and Hawaii.

"Get a website they said,.... It will grow your business to unimagined heights!" he mumbled angry after another long day at his office. His disappointment was painfully visible in his face. It had been more than a month since his website was online and he had sold exactly 1 item and that was actually his sister in law who probably bought the cheapest item she could find in the website because she felt sorry for him.

Though he didn't really believe in his website anymore, one good thing had come from his online activities. He now knew how to use a search engine and had actually become pretty experienced at searching online because he was searching for other websites that sell the same or similar products.

To his surprise he actually found a lot of websites that he would consider competition. He wondered why these sites sold a lot more than his site. He spent a lot of good money on it and could imagine that many of his competitors had done the same. He could even see that some sites probably spent even more money on it than he did. So why did those websites sell and his website remained almost unvisited, let alone sell? "Unlikely that those companies have that big family's in law."

Weeks passed by and when ever he had some time to spare he looked at his website and the others, comparing them to figure out what the differences are. He couldn't find it. The only thing he found out was that his website wasn't getting many visitors. Then one day a revelation came. He had a dream, a vision almost, of which he woke up in the middle of the night, his eyes wide open and his heart beating fast, thinking: "How did I find all those competitor websites???"

He ran to his computer, his wife upset about all the commotion, but she realized that it didn't matter what she would say, so she just went back to bed. He switched on the lights,... his PC,... his monitor,.... and then..... he waited: Like a diesel engine that you need to warm up before you can actually start it, his PC took the usual minute and a half to get to the point where he could connect to the internet. He opened his Internet Explorer browser, because he couldn't get used to the Firefox buttons, and went straight to Google, his favorite search engine, searching for what ever he could think of to find out how to get more visitors from search engines. Then he found the 3 magical words that would change his life for ever, making it possible to buy that house in the mountain and take those 4 vacations each year he always wanted. The 3 words he found were:

Search Engine Optimization