Living off Google free traffic is harder every day
June 5, 2006 – 6:37 pmIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Ever since Google went public, it’s been getting tougher to get free traffic from Google. They make nearly constant algo changes, and the discount almost all backlinks which are counted by other search engines. In some ways, Google spends so much time analyzing links, that the idea of just creating natural pages for rankings seems almost unlikely. Their very efforts to curb spam are likely to inflame the problem even more.
What I’ve been doing in response to many of Google’s recent algo changes has been to ignore them as much as possible. I will not make a decision based on “what Google will think” of my website, because frankly, I think Google is out of touch.
Like a billionaire you may have know when they were poor, Google no longer needs anyone. They have a huge market cap and a high flying stock to prop up their earnings machine, so it’s not likely they’ll be changing how they do business any time soon. If you get traffic, feel lucky, because it’s not a right, but a privilege.
Social networking websites are currently bringing in a ton of qualified traffic and that trend is likely to continue. You can find live bodies easily operating through the social network sites, who can be marketed to subtly and effectively. This traffic is very direct, and gives you a chance to convert them to your website for low or no cost.
Sure, Google is still the main referrer on most of my sites, but I’m looking forward to a day when there’s plenty of sources providing traffic to me. The whole world is still a bit Google-centric, but I see that dwindling every day.
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3 Responses to “Living off Google free traffic is harder every day”
Darren, you are absolutely right. Getting free search traffic is getting harder as time goes on.
More and more website enter the game, SEO knowledge increases as does unpredictability in search engines (and not just Google).
Sure free traffic is great but I recommend to any search marketer: if you plan on marketing on the internet for the next 3, 5, 10 years, get a bigger picture of the game. Time to start seriously considering alternate sources of traffic especially social network sites and blog traffic… and whatever else is coming on the horizon.
By Gomer on Jun 6, 2006
It’s a weird graph. You go straight up with search engine traffic up to a point, then you level off. If you aren’t retaining some of the visitors, I think your site traffic will stagnate.
More and more you need people to find your website on their own or through referrals from others. But once you get someone there, you better try and get them to re-visit. I spent a few years figuring I’d just sell the traffic back to Google, but there’s less profit in that every day, IMHO.
By Darren on Jun 6, 2006
Yes, that took me a few years to really grasp: if you have to fight it out every day for visitors that don’t represent repeat traffic, it makes for a hardliving.
By Gomer on Jun 6, 2006