Lately it seems like entrepreneurs everywhere have jumped on the online marketing bandwagon. From pay-per-click ads, to social networking, online article submissions, hiring SEO firms and more. Many are also spending a fortune and doing everything under the sun to improve their search engine rankings.

Just about every day I get another email looking for a link exchange with one of my sites. And about every other day I get an email from some SEO firm who wants to guarantee me the first spot on Google’s search results.

I ignore them all. In fact, I don’t even spend much time, money or energy trying to battle my way to the top of the search engine results. You may not want to either. And here’s why…

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If you take a look at a list of the oldest businesses in the world, you’ll see the glaringly obvious fact that the majority of the companies listed are Japanese.

Germany makes a good argument for having a fair few, while the U.S. begins a late charge once they broke away from British rule. The rest is a mish-mash of European countries and developing countries (at least in the later part of the list).

So why does Japan have such a strong command of business, and what it takes to survive?

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