If a Google employee drank a bit too much Google Juice and tripped over the extension cord powering things at the GooglePlex, what would happen to your website's traffic? Put another way, how dependent are you on Google's Search for website traffic?
In light of a recent lawsuit by Kinderstart.com against Google for damages caused by Google supposedly "penalizing" their site in their search results, I figured it would be worth looking at how Google-dependent we've become.
KinderStart's lawsuit has led to online discussions in search marketing forums and blogs, including SearchReturn, where Stacy Williams from the search marketing company, Prominent Placement, opined:
"Any business (like KinderStart) that relies on a free search engine listing it doesn't control for 80% of its revenue should really put some energy into developing a real marketing plan and moving some eggs into additional baskets."
That's certainly a fair point, but how does one go about diversifying web traffic sources in such a Google-dominant world? Here are a few ideas:
1. Increase inbound links to your site. This also happens to help your Google rankings since it's a key metric used by Google to determine how important a website is. Each link should also bring traffic to your site, making you less Google-dependent.
2. RSS. Once people get to your site, make it easy for them to keep up to date without re-Googling you.
3. E-mail. While
not as good as RSS, this is still another popular, non-Google way to keep in touch with your audience.
4. Pay Per Click Advertising. You can't control where you'll rank in the natural search results, but you can control where you'll appear in the Sponsored Results for the right price.
5. Other. What would you add to this list?
