Is It Possible To Succeed Without Google Search Traffic?

Anyone who knows anything about the Internet mentions Google at least once per day. That is just a fact of life that we all must live with (and look, I’m talking about Google now, see what I mean?). Lately Google has been causing quite a bit of controversy by penalizing some popular bloggers (like John Chow) for doing things like selling text link ads.

John runs a blog that is about making money online, or as he says “I make money online by telling people how to make money online.” I haven’t got a clue what his actual traffic figures are, but I’d imagine the amount of traffic coming from Google is fairly minimal. Regardless, somehow he is still gaining popularity and since he got penalized his monthly income has shot up by several thousand dollars.

But wait, how can that be? Isn’t the Internet all about Google? Well, that is a false belief. There is much more out there besides Google.

The Other Search Engines

Google’s current market share is (I think) around 50-60%. There are still many other search engines out there you can get traffic from, like: Yahoo, Live, and Ask.com (all 3 of those make up most of the remaining search market). While they are much easier to game, I personally tend to have better luck when searching on them than I do with Google. I suspect most spammers spend the majority of their time figuring out ways to game Google.

In fact, a recent survey done shows that Yahoo Search satisfies users more than Google.

Other Blogs

This is by far your most valuable source of traffic, and it is a good indicator of how well you are doing. If you’re getting traffic from other blogs on a fairly steady basis, then keep up the good work, but if you’re not then you should probably do a bit more promotion in related forums and in comments. Word of mouth advertising (someone telling someone else about a product or service) is much more powerful than anything you can get from Google. You can get the highest rankings in the world, but when it comes down to it people want to know if you are legit, and the only way to find that out is by reading about you on other blogs and web sites.

Social Media

It isn’t too hard to do fairly well on StumbleUpon and similar services, but the traffic they send tends to not convert into readers nearly as well as other Social Media Sites. If you can get on the front page of Digg and/or Reddit and/or Del.icio.us - your almost guaranteed to get a ton of traffic and a ton of links (which means other people are talking about you, see above). With that said - too much social media can be bad in some ways (over exposure).

Advertising

If you have some extra money, another option is to get some ad space either through an ad network or directly. I haven’t really tried this option yet, so I’m fairly clueless about how well the traffic converts (any bloggers out there know?). Don’t forget about services like PayPerPost and ReviewMe.

Do Other Things On Your Blog

As I mentioned yesterday, you can do things with your blog besides blogging. I get quite a bit of traffic for the programs on here. The Webmaster tools I’ve written have also brought in thousands of extra visitors. And guess what - most of that traffic is from other websites and blogs.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

My entire point with this post is you should promote you blog several ways, not just one way. If one of your traffic-generating methods goes out, your blog can still grow and be a success if you take the proper precautions. I think the only method that can make a huge negative impact is if other bloggers stop writing about your content - if that happens then it is probably time to close your blog or take a break and completely redo it.

So my answer is yes - it is very possible to succeed without Google search traffic.

Stay tuned for more Back To The Basics posts!

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