To answer this question let’s consider a couple of quotes by Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  Sergey is often quoted as once saying, “We believed we could build a better search.  We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equal.  Some are more important (than others).”

On another occasion, Google co-founder Larry Page stated, “It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculating a web site’s importance.”  The keyword here friends is “importance.”

Matt Cutts, Head of Google Web Spam Team, once advised . . . “To rank well, build a site so fantastic that it makes you an authority in your niche.” 

Having an online presence with a personal website or blog offers one of the greatest attraction marketing opportunities one can create.  However, the majority of website and blog owners don’t realize that web marketing and search engine rankings have evolved to a whole new paradigm that rewards the most authoritative websites.

Once again, “What do we mean by authority?”   Quite simply, websites that exhibit qualities of authority are as Google’s Matt Cutts pointed out, websites that can make you “an authority in your niche.”  You may or may not already be an expert in your field.  But I can assure you of one thing, if you don’t go about the business of building your website or blog “regularly, consistently and persistently,” it’s hard to sustain any authority you might achieve online. 

Sure, people who might know you to be an expert in your field might come to your website regularly, but for you to build an ever-growing presence online, made up of  a steady growing stream of new site visitors each day, you will need to achieve high search engine rankings.  To achieve, AND KEEP, high search engine rankings you must build a website that is perceived by Google’s mathematical algorithms as “authoritative in nature.”  

Why?  Because websites that exhibit authority become popular places people like to go online, and when searching on Google, Google wants you to be pleased with its search results by sending you to a website that is considered an authority or useful to others regarding the subject you searched for on Google.

So how does one build a website or blog that exhibits “authority?’  Quite simple, by adding great and useful content regularly.  For you see, Google has learned and trained its spiders (by regularly updating its algorithms) how to electronically recognize websites that exhibit authority. 

To understand how Google does this, we first must know a little about human behavior and consider ways that Google can measure human behavior via electronic means.  First, it stands to reason that if you’re publishing content people find useful and meaningful, they will begin to mention something you’ve said and/or link to you from their websites or blogs.  Google has ways of knowing how many incoming links are pointed to your website.  As this number grows you are considered more popular by Google’s search engine.  Thus, popularity is an excellent measure of authority in Google’s books.  In essence, the greater authority you become in your subject, the more people will write and talk about you online, and the more often they will link to your website. 

But Google has other ways of measuring authority (and popularity).  If you’re a user of Google’s email program Gmail, have the Google Toolbar installed on your web browser, use Google Reader, Google Analytics, Feedburner or a host of other Google owned tools, then Google has many eyes watching where you’re going online or who’s viewing our website online.  Google’s regularly recording and dissecting this information and determining just how well your website is perceived as a place of authority. 

In a nutshell, people follow and respond to people they perceive to be more important others  (i.e., people in authority).  And consequently, Google has invented ways to discover who the Internet public perceives as “important people” and ranks important web pages and websites higher than others.

Now you can see why I refer to search engine marketing as a whole new paradigm from what it used to be just a few short years ago.  And although the contents of what I’ve revealed in this blog post will discourage many, those that have come to realize what they’re up against online and will take my advice and begin creating good content regularly will ultimately become the authoritative websites in the electronic eyes of the search engine, and will begin “attracting” an ever-growing crowd of followers.  As you build more content you’ll begin to have more pages rank high in Google (and other search engines), and with an ever-growing number of high ranking pages in the search engine listings, you’ll have an ever-growing stream of traffic, followers and customers.

Isn’t that the true essence of attraction marketing after all?

Most traditional marketers focus far too much time and energy in trying to find leads and forcing their sale pitches on prospects that may have little or no interest.  If this is you, make a New Year’s resolution to implement attraction marketing into your arsenal next year and replace the time you’ve been spending combing and reseaching your marketplace for prospects,with time spent answering questions and making your presentation to people that have become attracted to you via the attraction marketing channels you create in 2010 and beyond.

Now I’m not going to write an encyclopedia and list 1,000 ways to attract prospects to you like a magnet.  But the point I want to make is the ways that one can successfully build a reputation through an attraction marketing plan are practically endless.  Still, many marketers lack creativity, so I will list several key attraction marketing methods that I use successfully in my own network marketing business.

Blogging

AttractionMarketing.com is a perfect example of an attraction marketing tool that brings me new leads and prospects.  But I actually run several blogs, covering not only my network marketing businesses, but other online enterprises I’m involved with.  A perfect example of how I use blogs to attract new prospects to my network marketing business can be found at www.watpros.com

eBooks

Personally written ebooks, like blogs, give people great insight into you and your business opportunity.  A perfect example of how I use ebooks to attract new prospects for my network marketing business can be found at www.workfromhomegoldmine.com

Free Offers

I’ve created a free business evaluation kit for my network marketing business.  I get leads through this offer that have been attracted to my blog at www.watpros.com or my free offer website at www.workathomedealer.com , and from classified ads I run occassionally that point to my free offer website.

Classified Ads

Point ads to information websites that peak people’s interest and attract them further to you and your business opportunity.   Many people would question me for listing classified ads in an article about attraction marketing, but they, just like search engines, represent just another search tool that people who are looking for an opportunity will use.  I don’t use classifieds regularly because my other free forms of marketing online bring me more leads than I can handle sometimes.  But when I do use them in my attraction marketing campaign, I always use them as a front-end lead development device that will push the lead to one of my information websites.  Once they arrive at my website and click for my free ebook or my free business evaluation kit, they’ve reached the halfway mark on their road to discovering the facts about me and my opportunity that will attract them to me and cause them to contact me via email or phone, without me having to initiate contact with them.  Through the information materials they’ll get for free by responding to my classifieds, they’ll learn everything they’ll need to know about me and my network marketing business opportunity.  And from what they learn, they’ll either be attracted to me or not.  Those that are, generally approach me on a first-name basis, for after reading my book and materials they feel as they know.  And frankly they do, for I’m brutally honest in my book and don’t sugar-coat the opportunity.  If you have the right business opportunity, you shouldn’t have to sugar coat it to draw interest.

Social Media

This is a form of attraction marketing that does get sugar-coated by almost everyone.  Does it work?  Yes.  Is it easy?  Yes.  Is it demanding and time-consuming?  Yes.  And that’s the one fact most social media marketers won’t tell you.  Sure, you can purchase scripts and software for ramping up your number of followers and weeding out prospects on forums like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, but don’t let anyone fool you, you can spend a lot of time on social media marketing before the results start pouring in.  My point is simple, it (like all roads to success), does take an effort.  In the beginning, you may quickly find that the reward doesn’t measure up to the effort.  Twitter is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.  If you want to turn Twitter into an attraction marketing machine you can, but it implies you need to tweet a lot and you need lots of followers.  I view Twitter and Facebook as just another arrow in my attraction marketing quiver.  I suggest you do the same and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

Branding

Yes, branding.  Butbranding as an attraction marketing tool?  That’s right!  If you want to develop an attraction marketig tidal wave to your business, you need to establish a brand so that there is one cohesive thread that ties everything you do together.  For example, my main marketing blog is at www.watpros.com.  I have since created a Twitter account under watpros, a You-Tube account under watpros and more recently a Facebook page for watpros.  The more people that come to see the watpros brand, the greater the likelihood that my brand will become impressionable and they’ll become attracted to me.

Traditional Websites

This one’s a no-brainer. Obviously, if you plan to implement an attaction marketing plan online, you will need a website.  I own and operate many that attract people to me and my business opportunity.   A perfect example of a highly optimized SEO-friendly website I built as part of my attraction marketing plan can be found here.

This has turned into a pretty long article.  But for more great tips on how to launch and build an attraction marketing machine for your business, and learn about the remaining ways to attract new leads that make up my list of 1,000 — keep reading my Attraction Marketing blog.