RSS FeedsHow not to depend much on search engines
Sep 19, 2008
95% of my writing business depends on search engine traffic. This is a dangerous situation. What if something happens – some change in the ranking algorithms, something that is not liked at my website – and my listings vanish from the search engine result pages? Does this mean I should pack my bags? Although I can start all over again and try to get back into the search engine results but this is a very shaky situation and I am sure many of you too are faced with the same dilemma. What is the best way to deal with such a situation?
Generating traffic without search engines
Let us except that the search engines are very powerful promotional tools and they should never be excluded from your Internet marketing effort, but they should never be the sole suppliers of your traffic. With millions of websites scattered all over the Internet it is not too ambitious to try to get some traffic from these websites directly. I will again emphasize that you can get the best traffic from search engines because when people come from search engines they are already looking for a specific search term and this may not happen if they are coming directly from a website. But then the advantage of getting traffic from a website is that a person clicks on your link fully knowing where he or she is heading to. So how can you generate traffic outside of the search engines? Here are a few thoughts; you are welcome to add yours.
Publish a blog
Regularly publishing a blog is the best way of driving high-quality traffic to your website without having to depend on search engines. Although blogs get tons of traffic from search engines due to the way they are published, a lot of traffic also comes from other websites and blogs and this is an advantage not enjoyed by conventional websites. People are constantly linking to blog posts, commenting about them, commenting on them and recommending them to their readers and friends. There are even many social bookmarking websites just to promote blog content among various readers and blog publishers. In few instances some bloggers have been blocked by the search engines (that is, their links didn’t show up on the search result pages) for violating various rules but the blockage didn’t affect them much although they did notice it and wrote about it. The mere act of writing about the blockage got them hundreds of thousands of hits from other blogs and websites. They couldn’t have generated such massive traffic merely from search engines. Once your blog has crossed the popularity threshold you don’t have to worry much about search engine traffic.
Have quality content on your website or blog
Interesting content draws crowds to your blog or website. People not only read the content they also like to link to it whenever possible, and if they are really impressed they put a permanent link to your blog on their blog or website. Quality content also enhances your credibility and people begin to trust you for your opinion. You get tons of repeat traffic. Great content also encourages your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds and this also helps you increase and maintain your readership – this readership doesn’t have to depend on search engines to find your blog and consume your content and consequently, generate business for you.
Be active on social media websites, online forums and blogs
We live in a conversation economy; lots of business is generated by encouraging conversation between buyers and sellers. But this is just one small aspect of social media marketing. What you are actually doing is establishing long-lasting relationships with different individuals. You don’t necessarily have to do it for a selfish reason because being social means giving more than taking. Be useful to people and people will be useful to you. Be an interesting person, be a resourceful person and people won’t take you as a business bug. Try to interact with people through Twitter, FaceBook, Plurk, Digg, Pownce, etc. Often it is not possible to track conversations on all social media websites so just focus on a couple or even a single website but do it thoroughly and establish yourself there as an authority. Network with as many people as possible.
Similarly, constructively interact on various online forums because you can get lots of quality traffic from these forums. Don’t spam and don’t leave meaningless comments just to leave your links because this doesn’t work; people don’t click your link if they don’t like what you have written. You should also leave comments on other blogs to let people know about the existence of your blog or website. But make sure that you add value to the ongoing discussion and this means read the content present on the blog or website carefully, think about it, and only then add your opinion.
Distribute your content to blogs and websites
There are many blogs that would eagerly accept your guest posts provided you have written something really worth reading and captivating. When these bloggers publish your blog post, what is known as guest blog post, they often put a small profile of yours under the post or over it with the link connecting to your blog or website.
Similarly you can submit succinct, useful articles to various websites and article submission websites. These article submission websites draw lots of traffic from search engines; this way you can get indirect traffic from search engines in case your own website or blog vanishes from there.
Include your link in your e-mail signature
This might not look like much but you never know where your e-mail may end up and who might click on the link you have included in your signature. And anyway having a link is a lot better than not having it. This can be really effective if you send out lots of e-mails on a regular basis.
Publish a newsletter
In terms of the Internet this is one of the oldest surviving modes of communicating with your visitors. When they visit your website encourage investors to subscribe to your newsletter so that they can receive regular updates from you. Although this can be same as subscribing to your RSS feeds but your newsletter is a bit different – people don’t need an RSS reader first of all to read your updates, and second, it will be difficult for you to publish everything on your blog; sometimes you need to communicate only through e-mail. Publishing a newsletter is one of the greatest ways of getting tons of highly targeted traffic to your website without having to depend on search engines.
Do share on this blog if you are aware of more methods of generating targeted traffic to your website or blog without search engines.
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Internet Marketing, SEO, Social Media
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September 19th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Quality post. every new tip helps. Keep up the good work
September 19th, 2008 at 7:25 am
I thought you were on to something here, unfortunately I had expected a big novel idea on how not to be dependent on search engine traffic. May be I will write something on this on this. Nice blog post though.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I really liked your blog and i must add you write really well. I compleatly agee with fact that relying on search engines is not the smartest way to go there is so much information online you’ve got to be able to post your articles in the forums . My main challenge is how really use facebook or twitter to get traffic thats the unkown for me
September 20th, 2008 at 4:30 am
You have a good article here with several valid and well illustrated points. On a side note, most blogs, no matter how diversified they are, still depend largely on the search engine, especially Google. It’s hard to break out of those cycles.
September 20th, 2008 at 4:45 am
@Leo: Hello Leo. Thanks for visiting my blog. I’m sorry to have disappointed you regarding the book writing idea :-). I will try something like that in one of my future posts.
@Maya: thank you for your kind words Maya. I think the only way to get some valuable traffic from Twitter and FaceBook is to increase your visibility. You need to devote time and interact with people. You also make sure that many people are ready to receive updates and messages from you. Some bloggers have thousands of “friends” at various social networking websites and whenever they post a link from their blog it goes to them.
@Damien: I totally agree with you. I don’t mean to say that you totally abandon the idea of getting traffic from search engines; I think along with targeting search engines one should also try to get traffic from other non-search-engine sources.
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
These methods do give good exposure to our blog, but I think in the long run we should aim for maximum pure organic traffic from search engines. Infact these methods help in the aforesaid process.
Excellent advice for novices to bring in some good traffic to their blog.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
Great post! i love the way you write!
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:59 am
If you care about your website you need to care about more than just the search engines for traffic.
September 28th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Yo Amrit! I was just passing by and here: “Let us except that the …”, just after the image; I guess you mean to say: “Let us accept that the…” OR “Let us accept the fact that..”. I stopped reading after that, that error ruined everything.
Man! 1.How can you blog post and NOT proofread it?
2. Your visitors don’t seem to actually READ your content nowadays, do they?
3.Please remove this comment and make the relevant correction.
It kinda spoilt the article.
Arvind.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Guest posting is recommended by many top bloggers. It brings an author’s regular readers to a new website.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:00 am
Leo of Zen Habits used guest posting to a phenomenal success.