If Google suddenly dropped your site for good what would happen to your online income?
For many Webmasters, it would be a total disaster.
If you’ve been around long enough to remember the infamous “Florida Update” of November 2003 then you heard the cry around the Net when thousands of Webmasters lost their Google rankings.
Some rankings returned after a few days. Others never did.
If something like that happened again, would you be prepared?
No Google Guarantees!
Just as wonderful as the free traffic from Google can be, there have never been any guarantees of a permanent listing so don’t get too comfortable.
And if Google (or any search engine) makes up a large percentage of your traffic, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to develop other traffic streams.
Google Knol (a project many believe is Google’s answer to Wikipedia) is already evidence that Google is getting more into the content business.
And while no one knows for sure how much of an impact Knol will have on the natural (free) results, we shouldn’t be shocked if Google starts using more of its own content down the line.
So it’s time to prepare yourself if you haven’t already.
Diversify your traffic portfolio and generate better revenue streams now! Here are some tips…
Seek Residual Income
The great thing about residual income affiliate programs is you get paid a commission for the lifetime of the customer you referred. Say you refer someone to an online dating site and their affiliate program pays you a 15% recurring commission.
Dating sites usually have recurring fees. So as an affiliate, that means you earn a commission each time that person renews their membership (monthly, yearly, etc.).
Domain names, web hosting, and weight loss membership programs are a handful of more topics that often have affiliate programs that pay recurring commissions.
But of course you can find them in several different categories. One way to quickly locate them is to go to your favorite search engine and type “[your topic] + residual affiliate programs” or something similar.
Yes, a traffic drop would obviously hurt when it comes to generating new sales, but the existing customer base you’ve developed through the recurring affiliate program, would continue to earn you commissions.
Collect E-mail Addresses
E-mail is a great way to keep in touch with your visitors. And these days when e-mail addresses are guarded more than ever by the owners, the people that do decide to give you their address really like and trust you.
In other words, your e-mail list is worth gold.
So even with a traffic drop, at least you’ll have a list of people you can continue to market to.
But be careful. Sending e-mail is a very delicate act. If you aren’t delivering relevant, useful content then your audience is only a quick unsubscribe away.
It may take some time to get it right, so be sure to ask for feedback regularly and check your unsubscribe rates often.
If you you have a blog, Feedburner will collect e-mail addresses for you and allows you to export the addresses into an Excel file for free! So if you aren’t using this feature on your blog, get on it!
Work The Social Media/Bookmarking Sites
I have to admit, I am just starting to get into social media a little more.
StumbleUpon and Digg have been bringing me some decent traffic lately so I’ve been spending time studying ways to make the most of these sites to gain a better presence.
Digg’s categories are very broad and best for sites with mass appeal (iPods, current events, etc.) but you can still generate some good traffic if you learn to write good headlines and content.
A little luck never hurts too (i.e. a popular Digg user decides to recommend your article.)
StumbleUpon has many more specific categories so I’ve found it easier to generate more targeted traffic from this site. Be sure to install the their toolbar and stumble upon sites other than your own. š
ProBlogger.net has a great article about getting the most from StumbleUpon.
Build Up More Bookmark Traffic
Bookmark traffic is the best. These are loyal visitors who love your site and keep coming back for more.
Of course, building up this is kind of traffic is not something you can do overnight. It takes time and there are a variety of ways to do this. But of course it starts with creating a useful site that people will want to come back to.
Unfortunately too many people fail at this first step.
Think of information/tools you can add on your site that would entice people to come back. Quizzes, contests, “topics of the day”, etc. are ways to keep your site on the minds of your audience.
Set goals. If your bookmark traffic is currently 10%, set a goal to triple that in the next 3 months.
And if you’re wondering how to determine how much of your traffic is from bookmarked users, Google Analytics has a statistic called “Direct Traffic”.
These people arrived at your site without a referring link or search engine, and it’s a safe bet that the majority is bookmark traffic or people who typed in your URL (which is virtually the same thing).
Keep it Honest
I’m not saying that if you never do anything wrong, Google will never drop you. There are many reasons you could lose your rankings.
Some people believe that the only reason people drop from Google is due to some kind of penalty. While that may be true in most cases, there could still be other reasons (competition, technical glitches, etc.).
No one is exempt from losing a Google ranking so please don’t be that naive.
However, if you remain a responsible Webmaster who does not engage in any black hat techniques to try and trick Google, keep updating your site with useful information and continue to get good backlinks from other sites, you’ll probably be OK…
…for now at least.
But don’t be surprised should you wake up one day and find that the party is over… or at least halted temporarily. Google has to continue to do what’s best for its bottom line and shareholders.
So enjoy the traffic while the getting is good, but remember to diversify and always have a back-up plan.
Just like you would never put all your eggs in one basket with an offline business…
Online should be no different.
After the lastest Panda update of Google, my website’s rankings have dropped. I lengthened my articles and worked on linking to pages within my website and in a week, my rankings got better significantly.
Google is changing very fast and there is no way except ppc that you can guarantee first page ranking on search engine. I think people should be ready to face these kind of updates and need to understand that there are many other way of getting traffic to your website other than google
I fully agree with Mr Perambur Kumar. A lot of traffic comes from Hubpages, freewebsitedirectory, indiastudychannel, eastindiaguide(dot)in,way2onlinejobs,ezinearticles.
If one writes reviews for others’s product that could be great way as an affiliate
Hub pages is getting lot of traffic. If your website suffer from low visitors then you can go for hub pages.
.-= Perambur KumarĀ“s last blog … Google AdSense Training – Direct Training for Google AdSense and SEO =-.
I have made some decent money using my main blog with Google AdSense. But here is a great method I have been using to make money online.
I purchased a digital product from the ClickBank marketplace and reviewed the product. Once I did this, I followed what I read to see if I would get the same results the writer did.
I did a short video teaching others what I learned and then made a recommendation to purchase the product at the end of the video. Of course, I only created a video for the products that actually worked for me. Since these products did work for me, by watching and following the video, you will also benefit by seeing a dramatic increase in conversions.
Then I recommended this product through my own affiliate link. This way I could earn commissions on what others sold. The best way I found to do this was to purchase a meaningful and memorable domain name and redirect the domain to my affiliate link. Then overlay that link in the video.
I usually post my videos on my blogs and send it to my mailing lists to make money. But if you don’t have a list, then upload it to YouTube and several other video sharing sites to make you commissions.
It’s a great technique that’s worked for me.
Cheers,
Timothy M. Theis
http://googlecash-pump.com
.-= TImothy TheisĀ“s last blog … Business Large or Small Benefits from Blogging =-.
great stuff to read..
but i tend not to lose my google or get deleted.. LOL
for me, honesty is human’s best friend. and i hope that my site can keep that way too.
ya its true that if Google suddenly dropped site for good our online income will drop and for many Webmasters, it would be a total disaster.
In todays time google give priorities to the fresh content. If you make your website useful it wont help.
Great post, Lisa! I have often thought about ways to make sure my site is not dependent upon any one source for traffic or income.
I’ve been reading about social bookmarking all day and I still don’t quite get the concept. I’m wondering if not many in my niche are using it as my niche isn’t tech related. I’m going to focus on something else for awhile and try again later.
That’s great to hear Johnny! Keep up the great work. Yes, Digg can be tricky to master but every now and then you’ll submit one article that gets “Dugg” and promoted. Plus I’ve noticed even if the site doesn’t get “Dugg” by a lot of people, I’ll still get some clicks.
Good post, I myself am just starting to look at the social media sites. I am on the DIGG but sometimes I get discouraged, because you Digg something and noone ever reads it.
But the traffic for my sites is up almost 50% the past 2 months just using the tips you have suggested…
Makes alot of sense. As they say – don’t place all your eggs in one basket!
Thanks for the informative post. Google keeps all of us on our toes, don’t they?