The free game is over with Google.
Yesterday we talked about free clicks. Google is changing. They are focusing on making money. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that the company is trying to make its revenue model more important than it’s free service model.
Google has been slowly taking away organic traffic for some time. Today they seem to be making changes at a quicker rate. Now, I don’t believe that SEO will ever really die. I think it’s simply changing.
What that means for bloggers and business bloggers is that different sources of traffic are necessary. Here are the sources of traffic to focus on in the future.
There is still great opportunity for bloggers. If you’re willing to change and adapt you can reap the rewards of traffic and new customers for your business.
Social Sharing Websites
People often call sites like Twitter and Facebook social media or social networks. I like to call them social sharing sites at least when it comes to the blogging world. These social sharing sites are important. People are connected to family, friends, co-workers and many others. We all have connections and we like to help them and entertain them and introduce them to interesting things.
Blog content is prime for this type of sharing. People love taking in interesting content like stories, how-to articles, videos and everything else you see on blogs and sharing it with their peers. This is powerful. I don’t see this ever changing really because it’s been going on even before the Internet. People love sharing interesting things. It makes us feel important. It gives us pride.
Create the content people like to share and you’ll forever have a place in the sharing world even if the sites change.
Email Lists
Don’t forget about the email list. Email is still a basic requirement of using the Internet. I believe I saw a stat recently that over 90% of Internet users use their email extensively. It’s important to get in that inbox and get that attention. Create email lists for your business and your blog. Use that list to gain subscribers that turn into repeat visitors to your site and your blog articles.
Search
I hear you. Yesterday I told you that search was dead and that the free traffic train was over. Well that’s true in a way, but search will always have a place in the blogging world. Google is changing, but I don’t think they’ll ever take away organic traffic fully. It’s possible, but unlikely at this point. Google will still send some traffic. I think other players will come along that will change search. You still want to focus on search traffic at least to some degree for your blog. Really at the core of it search is just another form of referral. If you can find sources of referral you’ll always have a business model for acquiring new customers.
Referrals
Referrals really drive a blog’s success. You want to get as many sources of referral as you can. Really it’s not about the channels or the sources of traffic. It’s about the people that are doing the referral. Focus on pleasing your target customers. You want to make sure those people love your products and services. You want those people to share your business name with others. You want those people to share your blog posts with others. It’s all about referrals. Google used to be one of those referral engines. You gave them access to your content and in return they gave you some referral traffic. They have changed their model now, which is fine, and it’s time to focus on other sources of referral.
Paid Options
I wasn’t sure if I should include this one or not, but finally relented. There are options to push your blog onto the audience you’re targeting. You can even use Google AdWords to push your content if you wish. I’m not a huge fan of push marketing anymore, but there is still a place for it and the more you can diversify your source of referrals the better.
You need to get new customers to keep your business growing. Blogging continues to offer opportunity for businesses willing to work to earn the referrals that have always driven new customer acqusition.
Are you going to take the opportunity to grow your company?