What if Google dumps me?
It has happened to me once or twice. And it could happen to you.
Google adjusts its ranking formulae, and suddenly, your site is nowhere in the rankings. Your website’s traffic declines dramatically, overnight.
Yes, high Google rankings are important to many small businesses. And no, Google didn’t do this to spite you. They changed their formulae to stay competitive, to get the best sites to the top.
So, what do you do if Google dumps you? The one-word answer is “diversify”. Do not put all of your eggs in the Google basket.
Until you get back to the top again, don’t panic. I know it can be hard. Your Google traffic may have declined overnight, and that can potentially cause a lot of angst.
But if you have been working all your internet marketing steps — then you have loyal visitors who keep coming back over and over again. Your site has great content. People love visiting it, talking about it, linking to it — and you are constantly posting fresh content, packed with new ideas. You have a promotion plan and you’re working it.
Marketing diversity is key. You have other ways of earning loyal visitors to your site. Maybe you have RSS feeds, an email list, eBay postings, YouTube viral videos, a fresh press release, an idea you can Digg, a Pay-Per-Click campaign to pursue, an article you can publish…the list goes on and on.
And the irony is…the more you focus elsewhere, the more Google will love you again. Google loves to see buzz via inbound links to your site from other popular sites. And Google loves to see fresh content and new ideas.
Teenage girl analogy. Sometimes, getting Google to love you again is like dating. If a guy you like ignores you, your best option is to focus on making yourself even more fabulous while dating other wonderful guys. Google will come crawling back once it sees how cool you are…and when it sees that other muscle-bound hunks dig you, too.
I know. Google has dumped me twice before during an algorhythm change….but within a few weeks, Google has always come back.
(And yes, it really is a popularity contest! )
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Comments
Well said. Most people are too dependent on Google. SEO is their staple of discussion. Yes, these people are like some fretting teenage girls! My traffic mostly comes from Thoof, Digg and other referrals. I have never bother much on SEO-friendly keywords in my post titles. For my 3-month old blog, I’m happy with the number of readers and subscribers.
Notorious B.L.O.G.
Thank you for posting. You are my new favorite blogger, because your blog made me laugh.
(And not in a lame, LOL way, either — but with the real kind of laughter that you doesn’t reduce itself to a typed acronym.)
[…] Your one million visitors won’t all come from one place at one time: nor would you want them to. If you put all your eggs in the Google basket and Google dumps you….where does that leave you? And if you suddenly got all your visitors in ONE DAY — how would that affect your bandwidth and ability to plan and deliver? […]