Is there life without Google?
Last Update: April 22, 2012

Over the last few days I have started to become very uncomfortable about the future of my on-line business. I have had an online shop for over 10 years, originally it was local business but evolved over the years and now delivers nationwide. We do very little local work and due to the current climate doing just local work is no longer an option as I just couldn't earn enough to pay the bills.

About 7 years ago I started doing PPC and my business really took off but after a couple of years a lot of my competitors also jumped on the PPC band wagon,. I then found that I was having to pay Google more and more to maintain the same level of income and made the decision that I needed to stop relying on PPC. I paid my hosting company to do some SEO on my site to increase my organic rankings and after about 6 months I was able to do away with PPC altogether and for the last 4 years my site has been of page 1 of Google for a very competitive keyword.

About a year ago I realised that I needed to move further up the rankings, I tried out a couple of SEO tools and made a few adjustments and then the tool told me that the only way I could increase my rankings further was to get more backlinks. I had no clue how to do that! I started doing some research on line and eventually came across WA where I have been learning all about SEO and backlinks since November!

Since being here as well as creating backlinks for my existing site I have also as created some new sites, written content for my web pages and articles for quality backlinking, social bookmarking and the like all to, unless I have got this wrong, help move my sites up the Google rankings to enable me to get traffic to my sites from people searching.

My main business has a small amount of repeat customers but the majority of my business is from new customers and so I rely heavily on my page 1 listing for traffic to the site. I'm pretty sure that for most affiliate marketers promoting amazon and clickbank products this would be the same for them.

The other day a well respected internet marketer blogged that they were no longer going to rely on Google for traffic because Google are no longer sticking to their own rules. They are listing websites with no content in the top 10 rankings and well established websites with good quality content and white hat SEO are just disappearing to the backwaters. I don't want to name names but this person is lucky because they state that they are only reliant on Google for 30% of the traffic to their site as they also get 30% from referrals and another 30% direct - the customer is putting in the URL. They said they were going to stop worrying about pleasing Google and just create the site for themselves and their customers.

Now my main site has been built for my customers - it has to work so that they can find what they are looking for but it still has all the normal SEO work of keyword density etc and I have been busy creating backlinks to ensure that the site remains on page one but I don't have a plan B and I don't really know how to make one! What if Google stopped loving my site for no reason? If the online shop that pays my bills and feeds my family stopped converting I would go broke pretty quickly!

So what is life without Google? How do we all become self sufficient? 

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Labman_1 Premium
At this point Google seems to be focusing on a good customer experience. Keep that available to your readers and customers and you should be fine. If you are concerned about loosing out on your main business, well, while you still have the main business start working on a diversified strategy.
As I'm going through life and watching the companies that I work for trying to make inroads, I find that the ones that are doing the best have different baskets. Those that concentrate on one income stream are at the mercy of that market. If there are additional streams of income when one gets damaged or that market segment hits a rough spot, the others tend to compensate or at least mediate the problems.
suem Premium
Yes I am trying to build up other income streams so at some stage I can sell/give up my main income site - don't want to be sending out packages all my life! but I do need it at the moment while I am still building, if my main business were to collapse now I couldn't afford to go on with my plan.
jatdebeaune Premium
A person can get so tired worrying about Google and what they will do next. I think you just have to do things your own way and do them well, and your patronage will follow you. You/we have WA to clue us in on what's happening, so we just adapt to the changes. If Google does anything too disruptive to us, they'll hurt themselves. All of us together are creating Google. If we drop out, what's Google? I think the trend toward quality content is good news. I can trust myself to provide good content. Seems to simplfy SEO. Sounds to me that you are handling your website like a brick and mortar property. Don't worry about Google.
jatdebeaune Premium
Thinking more about your blog because I am dealing with something similar. Have come to the conclusion that branding yourself is one way to be not so dependent on Google. Get them to seek you out. I'm working on growing my authority in my niche, so that people will be seeking me out and I will be apart from the competition. It takes time and effort. Offer something nobody else is offering or can offer: a service or something. To expand your online businesses, explore other kinds of affiliate marketing that are not reliant on Google. You do need traffic. Develop a list.

There are other ways of getting traffic now, such as Facebook and Pinterest, even Twitter. Just think out of the box..
rp138 Premium
Your point is valid. In fact, after reading this, my plans are going to have to change somehow as I start learning more and more about IM. I think I need to take this point you've made into account and try to find other options as I build so that I'm not laying down a "Google only" foundation.

The fact is that I have no advice I can give you as you're FAR ahead of me. But I have read a number of posts/blogs/articles that don't actually discuss this 'Google change' outright, but while writing about their subject content, touch on some very unsettling things about Google that have been showing up lately.

Little things, which I don't have a good understanding of but that are reported in an ominous way. I wish I could remember some of the more recent articles or posts that I've read in which the writer made a negative observation in this area. Next time I read one, I'm going to start copying and pasting these statements so I can run them down, (I've already started with yours).

So what you've written is just another 'thing' about Google and the uncertain methods they're apparently changing to. The 'Google Sandbox' is nothing new and most say it doesn't exist but it still makes you pause and want to look at focusing some effort towards Yahoo and the like. Maybe that can be one option for you to look at.
Rich
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