The biggest problem facing most e-Commerce strategies is traffic. You build a site ready to take orders and then expect customers to find you. WRONG.

Put it into perspective offline - you've built a shop where no-one is or goes. Take this example...

You've got the most amazing product range, say a super-comfy sofa-bed. It has state of the art ergonomics and dozens of cool, attractive features - the sofa-bed has been centre stage at every single major trade show and exhibition worldwide.

What's more, you've talked to the manufacturer and got by far the lowest pricing available, which in turn allows you to be far more flexible with your own margins and be so much more competitive.

You have literally hundreds of promotions going with it including free holidays, free cars and a lifetimes supply of chocolate with each sale.

... but you never make a sale.

Your shop is in the middle of the desert where no one is. There is no stream of customers, no source of revenue and no business.

In the offline world, how do you ensure that you get customers? Location, location, location! Nab the best spots in the high-street and drive customers into your shop.

Online, this means prime spots at Google and other search engines. Getting there can be achieved via two avenues: free rankings, and paid-rankings.

Paying for Google AdWords is pretty much the quickest route to drive traffic to your site. Depending on your return on investment, it can be a sensible route to go down. You'll probably lose some money as you figure out what works best for your website, but once you find a formula that benefits your bottom line your away!

But remember, your traffic stops the moment you stop paying out. Buying traffic should ideally be supplementary, not the core to your traffic income. The sustainable e-commerce strategies will be drawing lots of free, targeted traffic at the search engines. Ranking well at the search engines is subject to literally millions of different criteria, be it on your site or off. Optimizing for these criteria is called SEO - or Search Engine Optimization.

Modern e-Commerce strategies simply MUST factor in SEO and the long-term, sustainable traffic that it can bring. Not doing SEO is like bricking up the door to your high-street shop. Yes, it's that serious!