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14/11: The World Without Google?

Does your entire web business rely on Google Adwords or high search engine positions? If so, you could be in for some cash flow problems. Here's a simple test for your online business - If Google were to shut down tomorrow, would your business also be closing its virtual doors? If you answered “yes” - then it's time to kick in some other traffic generating strategies.

Let's face it - Google has made it easy. They've made it easy to immediately advertise any new product or service. Traditionally the ROI (Return On Investment) for Google Adwords has usually been very good. And if you've got high organic rankings, even better. But that's starting to change.

So what's the problem? There are two problems actually.

1. If it's easy, everyone is going to be doing it.
2. He who makes the rules can change the rules.

Problem #1: Everybody's doing it

Because Adwords is so easy to set up, it allows anyone to slap together a product and start promoting it instantly in any niche market. Competition is going to continue to increase exponentially. I've already seen this in many of my niche markets.

Most of the time the new competitors don't last, but then the next one pops up. This process repeats itself sometimes weekly. Many new to the business, suddenly realize they can't even break-even – they suffer a loss due to the high cost per click. They look at it as a one shot deal. In a minute, I'll share the good news (you don't have to break-even. This works especially well for a membership site).

Problem #2: Changing rules

It's no secret that Google likes to do a shake up every now and then and change the rules or adds rules. They took some heat from the online business community lately when they changed page ranking rules. If your business only relies on Google for traffic then you're giving Google the power to make or break your business. It doesn't have to be this way.

Generating traffic without Google

For most of us, Google is still one of the most valuable channels to market our products. Personally I've made a lot of income from Google. But it's not as easy as it use to be. Just in the last few months my Adwords budget has increased by over 80%. And that's not all, ROI per keyword has decreased. This means on average, keywords are costing a lot more and returning less.

Am I concerned? Not at all. Below you'll see some of the strategies I use to counter the increasingly high cost of Adwords. But these strategies don't stop me from continuing to pursue other methods of generating traffic.

The bottom line is this: Google will still bring highly qualified traffic – by using simple strategies, you can still make it profitable even when others can't. I'm not talking about better sales copy or higher conversion rates (although that certainly helps). I'm talking about other strategies that you can use without changing any of your ads or sales copy. More on this in a minute.

Here's my philosophy:



Social media marketing Vs Google

In a previous article we talked about marketing to communities. Social media marketing is perhaps one of the most effective ways to generate a lot of traffic. It's free and it will continue to grow dramatically in 2008 – and guess what, it will be fueled even more by high priced pay-per-click advertising.

What is Social media marketing? Social media marketing is simply promoting your site using social channels. This can be anything from forums to blogs to FaceBook and Youtube. It's any site that has an interactive community, or a network of people interested in a specific topic.

7 steps to developing your own “social media marketing” strategy

For starters, don't feel overwhelmed by the term or name. This is not another high tech thing to learn, or something only the Internet gurus can use. In fact, you're probably already on at least one social network site. All you need is a few simple strategies to ramp up your online networking skills and place your site within a social media network.


1. Identify the main influences on social media sites. Sites like Digg.com are entirely based on content submissions from people like you, the community (just like YouTube). As Digg.com states “If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.”


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Best regards,
Ansel Gough
www.MembershipSiteAdvisor.com