There’s a lot of talk about all the changes going on right now. And a lot of panic if you live in a totally Google obsessed world.
Negative SEO, Authorship markup, over optimization penalties, etc. If you live in that world, you have probably read something somewhere over the past few weeks. And if you are relying on Google for your payday, you are probably following really closely to every rumor, speculation and fact to make sure that you aren’t the next victim.
But meanwhile, in another place and (seemingly) in another world….
- Someone is grabbing email addresses for their new project…
- Someone is having lunch with a client and is referring them to a website that will help them solve their problem…
- Someone has brokered a deal to be included as a sponsor in a major local event…
- Someone has said something smart on a forum and helped 50 people see things differently…
- Someone has reached out to another “competitor” for a joint venture that will be good for both of them…
- Someone is testing a keyword group for a pay-per-click campaign that will give a 20% ROI over the year…
- Someone is attending their first conference in their market and making new connections….
- Someone is bending over backwards to answer a complaint….
- An editor for a major newspaper just found someone’s press release and found it interesting enough to publish it….
And so on and so forth….
I recently made a comment on facebook that said this-
This is going to sound crazy but every time I read a “no reason to panic” post re: google search, I wonder to myself, isn’t that a terrible place to live?….always feeling like you have no control over your traffic or your business? And shouldn’t you look for a way to change that, rather than constantly having to check your rankings to make sure that you aren’t the next victim?
The point is that when you live in a totally specialized world (such as ranking in google), you will only see things one way. And while it is true that it is good to be enlightened and informed, gravitating to one ad medium for your sole source of traffic (or major source) when that ad medium can change the rules is simply not smart.
And there isn’t just one way. There are hundreds of ways. And hundreds of steps to get there.
What world are you living in?
image attributions- http://www.flickr.com/photos/librariesrock/4689382045/
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Twitter: lissie45
says:
I think Google is running a superb “fear and loathing” campaign – the level of bullshit and chaos will certainly scare some out of affiliate marketing and MMO – which will be all good for Google.
Frankly having seen the real Google in action I’d never trust them enough to run a PPC campaign, quite apart from the fact I don’t want to support their bottom line, I most certainly don’t want to trust them with my MONEY as well as my sponsored ads rankings LOL
And how exactly do you “grab email addresses for the next campaign”? Social media or SEO, Google is always going to matter to most of us.
In fact the people I feel really sorry for in the recent chaos are the small business owners who are left wondering how to use social media to promote pest control!
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Lissie,
Here’s the real issue (and I never really knew how to address this until I started working with actual businesses and companies)…
People say that they need search to promote things like pest control. And they do….if they aren’t really in the pest control business. It isn’t exactly a socially defined market (I keep thinking of Dale of King of the hill).
But in most cases, it isn’t national either. It’s local. And so local pest companies (those who are actually in the business of pest control) stand to have a better chance to rank in the only area that is really relevant to them in the first place- local – which really isn’t that hard if you are a legitimate company.
And if it was national, or the company was looking to push toward a national brand, then chances are good that they would be opening up stores in localities and making a budget for ad spends, ad spends that would do things like either push brand awareness or use list building as a means to draw in more customers. And it usually begins offline (b/c it is a legit company) and moves online from offline efforts.
Here’s an example of how a company may work this- You go to a address database, purchase addresses within a 5 mile radius of your business from people who own their own home and make more than 75k a year for $250-500. You take those addresses, and use a direct marketing campaign offering pest control services. 1-4% bite and give your company a shot. You offer a referral program to the customers. You offer a % off if they like your page on Facebook. You ask them to review your company at yelp. And then you start to grow both online and off.
So, yeah. When you look at businesses that go beyond a content only model and actually offer more than being a go-between product and company, the options suddenly expand as far as promoting your business.
I see people who want to debate the non-social argument. But it goes beyond whether a business is social or non-social. The heart of the matter is, is the business legit?
I’m not saying that content marketers who compete for phrases like “homeopathic pest control for ants” aren’t legitimate…just that content is cheap and content marketers who rely on search as an ad medium to drive people to their offers are missing the bigger part of the equation.