10 Non-Google SEO Ways to Promote your Business Online in 2009
The Road to Tomorrow (and Happy 2009!). Creative Commons license by Stuck in Customs.
While Twitter has become the perhaps single most important social site for marketers this year it’s time to reevaluate the ways to promote your business online in 2009.
Are the methods we used in 2008 still valid? Do they still work? Or do we have to adapt again in 2009 to a whole new Web? Moreover: Which ways outside the Google search moloch are there?
Thus I picked the 10 Non-Google SEO Ways to Promote your Business Online in 2009. With SEO I mean the strict definition so that PPC, email marketing and affiliate marketing etc. are not included regardless of their worth.
- Twitter! Do I need to say more about that? Connect with your peers, fans, clients and inform about special offers etc.
- Blogging at a hosted blog on your domain is still the best interface for your online business, your clients love it, people loosely interested in your offering love it, Google loves it
- YouTube videos are quite frequently on top of Google search results and the site has millions of visitors on its own, Will it Blend? Yes you can as well.
- LinkedIn is the number one place to find professionals in each category, you can also determine the authority of any expert by his contributions (not necesessarily by the number of connections)
- Social shopping sites are the new kid on the block you can’t ignore. They boomed in late 2008 and can’t be ignored anymore.
- Shopping search engines, especially for ecommerce sites are still big, everybody uses them o compare products and prices. You must be there.
- Yahoo Answers + other Q&A sites unless you are in a business where everybody knows everthing by heart ;-)
- Review sites like TripAdvisor, not only for the travel sector both influence consumers like no other websites and they propel your Google Local listings to the top too
- Local sites and local search like TrueLocal, Yell.com, Qype.co.uk allow people to find what they want in their vicinity, they are becoming more popular due to the smartphones and netbooks wave
- Niche communities, for all kinds of businesses, it might be forums, Ning comunities, niche social sites like Sphinn for search marketers
Viewing this list it might occur to you that it’s important to use several crucial sites that matter. In a way most of these are “search” or “hub” sites depending on what you look for. Do not focus mainly on Google.
The above sites and services make you succeed in Google as a side-effect. They work directly in the first place by guiding consumers in your direction.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
… and did you leave a deliberate omission for the careful reader to spot? Commenting on others’ blogs is clearly a great way of being visible in the SEs and I don’t think it was covered in your list, unless I was missing something. :)
April 16th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Yelp.com. Since I got my G1 Google phone I use it to find restaurants and things. It’s amazing how mobile some of these different “Ways to Promote” are becoming.
I’m not surfing the web so much on my phone as much as I am consuming data that different social networks are providing me through and application.
I’d say Google is overrated, but who am I kidding. I think the mobile market is going to make a lot of social networks with open API’s explode.
April 16th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Good stuff Tad, I’m starting to love Twitter more and more lately as far as traffic has concerned.
Here’s a nice tip for all you smart marketers out there, combine 1 + 7.
Cheers,
Glen
April 17th, 2009 at 4:00 am
Some excellent tips there,
Linked in is great if you have the time to contribute decent & informative articles. If you have life, then this probably won’t work so well for you.
I personally have generated the most success through number 10, niche communities, if feel its as good if not better than blogging & twitter.
Cheers, Phill
April 17th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Hey Glen! Let me know how you do it! :-)
April 17th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
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April 17th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Fantastic list!
April 17th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
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April 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
These are great ideas, and very helpful to drive traffic. I will just argue with your second method “blogging” being that I would consider it to be a “google seo” method, unless you launch the blog with a few thousand subscribers and have people coming back to the blog via blog feed (But that will still be similar to “email marketing”).
For those that are interested in a list of social shopping sites Mashable has compiled a great list which you can find here http://mashable.com/2007/08/08/social-shopping-2/
April 20th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Great list. What other types of review sites would you recommend? I have to agree with comment #1 on blog comments. I would also add social bookmarking sites like delicious, digg, stumbleupon, reddit, etc. that are great for link building and driving traffic. Although some are nofollow, the traffic is still significant for ranking and branding.
April 20th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
David, consider our subscriber count at SEOptimise! Also my own blog has 1650 subscribers. So clearly this is not about blogging for Google and creating “content” but about writing killer resources for flagship blogs.
April 20th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Tad you are correct that blogging is about writing great content to get repeat visitors which are interested in what you have to offer. But you have to get the visitors to your blog in the first place, traffic does not come by itself. In essence a blog does not create traffic (on its own, you need to rely on search, referral sites brand awareness and implement some of the above “9″ suggestions), but its a great way to redirect the traffic that it is getting to your important pages.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Nice article. Interesting comments about the social shopping sites. Hadn’t heard of that before
April 21st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Tried Truelocal, failed on a number of searches for a city near me (Bristol)… perhaps still only applicable to the US market? Lots of my clients are telling me they wish to drop Yell AND Yellow Pages in favour of Google Adwords, I’m keen on balance so have said to them its something they should carefully consider, they might get low monthly traffic when compared to Google but I notice local searches tend to result in far higher time on site.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:28 am
Very nice article. I like your idea of Yahoo Answers and am going to Twitter this article. A lot of good information for my friends on Twitter that they can use.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:36 am
Great list.
Thanks for letting me know some new tips that I have ever heard before.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 am
I have been using yahoo answers for awhile now and just started using twitter…two accounts, one for each niche. Twitter seems the most promising.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Some good advice here; some I am constantly working at, others I need to improve on! Interesting about the Yahoo Answers and other Q&A sites – i’ll definitely research and get involved a bit more. Thanks :)
Lee.
May 1st, 2009 at 3:19 am
Nice choices. It would be great to write a follow up article with more detail on the best ways to use some of these tools. For example, Yahoo! Answers is a great tool but what types of techniques work to consistently drive traffic from the site?
May 1st, 2009 at 7:37 am
I just got a client through linked in so I believe it is promising…
Coach Ioan
May 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
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May 14th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Complete information is given by you in this blog. That list might be helpful and useful to me.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Thanks for the info & tips. And love the intro photo and caption … how appropriate!
May 15th, 2009 at 1:14 am
I’m a new marketer and want to study SEO. I’s a real good ways. Need to know more information about it. Nice list
May 21st, 2009 at 9:41 am
I just came on this blog and it is very interesting and informative same time. All readers should be impressed with this post.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Nice tips. Many of these were new to me.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Point 5 interests me – social shopping. I wrote an article on the subject and reference 10 sites which I think give a good cross section of the genre
http://www.amazines.com/E-Commerce/article_detail.cfm/909997?articleid=909997
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm
On LinkedIn you have the ability to create 3 links to your website
a). Makes sure to use all of them
b). Instead of leaving the default text eg “My Website”, select the other option when configuring this and this allows you to enter your own anchor text.
Handy!!!
Ian
October 10th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I think the local adds are now the key, in the marketing. Social network are more general, and it didn’t offer a specific field. But a local ad goes straight after the keyword, and the location. And is free… Is’t great? Great information.
November 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
i tried every non-googl techniques to get more traffic but the result is big zero i got about 100 uv/day almost 100% from google i tried social bookmarking, linkedin, forums every thing. even yahoo and bing srive me zero traffic.please send my your diagnosis for my case lol
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I tried to promote my web design portfolio website submitting site to web inspiration galeries. It was a succes for my bussines, more than 100 unique visitors daily.
December 5th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
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January 15th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Thanks for the tips. Great list.