Promote Your Site As Though Google Didn’t Exist
Posted on February 7, 2008 by
Adie 
Internet Marketing, Promotion, SEO 
24 Comments
Brian Clark has an excellent post about relying too much on Google for traffic.
Believe it or not, my strategy since the beginning of Copyblogger has been to pretty much forget search engines exist. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not doing anything to annoy them, and I certainly don’t turn away visitors from search engines. I just don’t depend on them for traffic.
This is a timely post because of the Google has been dropping the PageRank on some sites that sell links. Danny Sullivan, a premier search journalist, contacted Google about this and this is what they said:
[Google] confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.
In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached to prevent them from ranking well.
Maybe Google even targeted this site because we’ve gone down from PR5 to PR4.
How to Stop Relying on Google Traffic
Brian’s post gives three practical ways to stop relying on Google. First, he talks about focusing on getting repeat visitors through subscriptions. Bloggers should always be encouraging their readers to subscribe to their RSS feed. If you have a readership that is not very tech-savvy, you should also promote a RSS subscription through email. If you have a static site, build a list. I recommend Aweber for this.
Second, Brian tells us to get traffic from social media sites. The social media audience is among the fastest growing audiences on the web. The key to social media marketing is producing content the social media audience will like and building friendships with the users so they will vote on your content. Don’t just rely on the big sites like Digg, Propeller, and StumbleUpon. There are niche sites too that can send more targeted traffic. Also, Brian considers blogs social media sites. I’ve never thought about blogs that way, but blogs do have a big social element.
Third, Brian says we should start selling. As you begin to build your subscriber base and get traffic from social media sites, you’ll build trust and a reputation that allows you to sell effectively. Whether it’s advertising, reviews, links, ebooks, or other products, don’t be afraid to sell to your existing audience. People like to buy quality products from people they trust.
Totally Ignore Google?
If you have SEO skills, this doesn’t mean you should stop doing keyword research and trying to hit the top 10 of Google. However, you should also focus on the above three tactics. If you focus too much on Google, Google could wreck you and you would lose most of your traffic. Build a defensible site that survives even if Google bans it.
Further Reading
- Build Websites Like Search Engine Traffic Did Not Exist
- Content Without Subscribers Will Become Worthless
- Robots Don’t Spend Money Online, People Do (This relates to Brian’s third point about selling more.)
Conclusion
Are you depending on Google too much?
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Too many people think Google owns the world. They don’t. They have as much power over our websites as we have over their site. We can both do whatever the heck we want.
If they don’t like something that webmasters do (and let’s face it A LOT of webmasters and bloggers are selling links to crap sites), they are well within their rights to do what they can to help aleviate the problem. Just as we have a right to sell links if we want to.
While I think making paid-for links worthless would have been more than enough to fix the problems, but at least I can see why they are penalizing people.
Would be useful to know what the criteria are precisely for link sellers that get penalised, if its only some that will be targetted. It’s easy to guess the sort of offences which will seriously put a site in jeopardy, but there will be a threshold somewhere which link sellers will need to stay well below in order to be realtively sure they are safe.
The criteria is sites that sell links. However, Google punishes some sites and does not punish others. It’s random, which seems to be part of their strategy of using fear, uncertainty, and doubt to get webmasters to do what they want.
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Hi Dee,
As with any thing, If you are doing the right thing there is no need to be afraid of anything.
Google will be do what is in their best interest and I will do what is best in my Interest.
Only difference being Google is also looking for long term business viability so am I. Only when some people tend to have short sightedness then things go Wrong.
Vijay
Although it’s a good headline to get attention, not considering Google when promoting your website is foolish.
The article fails to specify a good reason for ignoring Google.
Why not do everything? Google, social media, whatever. Use every tool available to the webmaster.
I’m thinking his point was: Don’t become a “when is the next PR update? Will I get penalized? When is the next PR update? Will I get penalized? When is the next PR update? Will I get penalized?” type of person. Go on DP or any SEO forum and you’ll see what I mean, all they talk about is Google, Google, Google.
Jeremy, you took the words out of my mouth :)
Also, Pete, the reason to not focus a lot of Google is because Google randomly penalizes sites that sell links. Check out the second link in the post.
The PR obsession is obviously a big thing, and I try not to focus on it too much. I have to admit that I’m not being on SEO and don’t really know much about it, I just write content for my readers and myself. Most of my sites seem to somehow attract organic Google traffic even though I haven’t made any conscious effort to make them do so. I do plan to get more serious about SEO at some point, but right now I’m focusing on content and not worrying too much about Google or Yahoo or anyone else. I do most of my advertising by leaving useful comments on blogs I like, and on forum posts. Seems to work well for me. I have also found that Yahoo seems to love my sites more than Google does, but I get decent amounts of traffic from both.
Your points are quite valid Dee, we need to focus less on PR and more on other things.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s a good example of running a site without worrying about Google.
I have to admit it is nice to forget about Google. I have been screwed by a pagerank update a few times. Since I have shifted more toward blogging and social media, it took me a month to realize that Google wasn’t indexing my site. My traffic just kept on climbing. For the first time, Google has gone from a main focus to something less than that.
I have to agree that I do get a lot of traffic from my blog I wish I could turn that into passive income so I wouldnt have to worry so much about service leads
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Being totally dependent on Google for traffic is like placing a time bomb on your blog as you will never know when Google will aim at you.
I see search engine traffic as an added source of traffic and will definitely mess with it to lose that portion of traffic. Most of my traffic are from social media and referrals from other blogs since I enjoy commenting so much.
I understand that Google is falling to less than half of the internet traffic with social sites picking up the rest. James Brausch has a Intern Program that taps into the social sites as well as blogs for traffic.
If I lost google as a traffic source I would lose about 70% of my visitors. I should probably remedy that.
So how much are you paying for these comments???
They are all so obviously fake as your posts are as transparent as ever and the only question i have is why you continue to pump out awful content?
And how much you pay per comment…
Its old content. Its just being reposted as fresh to make it look like new stuff is still being posted.
I stopped relying on Google sometime ago but it took the help of a good friend and client to open my eyes.
The more Google slapped me around the harder I tried to please them but sometimes there is just no pleasing them. Once that became clear in my mind my business started moving forward because at that point I started relying on social networking and bookmarking.
That is when my traffic started to grow and things started happening for my blogs.
I still optimize my pages for search engines but I am not fanatical now. :)
Excellent essay. It is very useful for me. Thank you very much http://www.tourhag.com/iyinet-webmaster-forumu-2008-seo-yarismasi/
It’s funny I just had a site get PR which I’ve never had before, but it didn’t give me more traffic. It’s credibility for those that need it.
I agree though, focusing only on Google isn’t really beneficial. I use RaSof to determine how the big three search engines are viewing my sites. Then I make sure that the people finding me and the message I am sharing are congruent. Promoting for Google or any other search engine specifically is not as useful if the people finding your site using that search engine aren’t sticking around.
SEO has become such a buzz word that people think it is the be all and end all of online success. CopyBlogger has a point when he says you should not rely on it. Diversification is key as is increasing the quality of your traffic.