Worrying about Google rankings isn’t good for your health and it certainly isn’t good for your business. This year Google has probably dished out more penalties towards sneaky webmasters than at any other time in it’s short history and yet we still rely on them for traffic every day.

Letting a third party company which is totally unaccountable to any government body is like putting your savings into a bank run by somebody you met in a bar. It just doesn’t make good business sense.

Sure Google says that it has users best interests at heart but what would happen if they banned your perfectly legitimate, never broken any rules website tomorrow. Aside from sending Google an email what could you really do to fix things? Nothing. You can’t call them, you can’t sue them and they don’t have to even justify your complaint with an answer.

Imagine if Google starts to lose users and they all switch to MSN or just browse sites recommended by their Facebook friends, where would your site be in terms of traffic & revenue?

Now is the time to build up your non-Google traffic, it’s reliable and it might just make you a better webmaster.

Step 1: Subscribers

Build up email lists and RSS subscribers who want to read about your latest products and the latest news in your industry.

Step 2: Involve yourself in social media

Make sure your site is an authority within the social news space

Step 3: Links links links

OK, most links don’t send much traffic but it’s a well known fact that a lot of links with 1 click a month all add up to a lot of sustainable traffic.

Step 4: Start a forum

If you have the chance to run a successful forum then you will end up with sustainable long term traffic without relying on any search engines. If you can’t start a forum then either buy one or take an exclusive advertising deal, communities will drive traffic if Google disappears.

Posted in seo |