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Articles Index >> Marketing
3.5 Reasons You Need To Forget About Search
Engines
by Michael Cheney
Ever find yourself visiting Google.com and typing in phrases relevant to your
website to see where you come up? Of course you do. Everyone does it. Have you
ever stopped to think how much time is taken up over the course of a year just
by that niggling thought at the back of your mind;
"Am I on the first page?"
I bet it if you counted up all the times you did it you would be looking at
hours, maybe even days! But are search engines really that important to the
success of your website? No, they're not - here's why..
1. They waste your time.
Admit it - you spend hours just seeing where in the rankings you appear when
you could be spending that time improving your business, adding more great content
to your website or following up on those sales leads.
2. They owe you nothing.
There is nothing more dangerous than your website's traffic and hence your
business' revenue being dependent on one type of resource (i.e. search engine)
or worse still one particular search engine. They can change the way they list
and rank sites over night - they are not indebted to provide you with consistent
traffic. Just look at the latest sweeping changes made by Google - businesses
literally went under as a result of being solely dependent on one primary source
of visitors.
3. They sap your soul.
There can be nothing more disheartening than seeing your ranking in the search
engines either fall from page 1 to page 99 or disappear completely. People can
get caught up in a mesmerising dance with the search engines constantly changing
their site to pander to the needs of the search engines. Remember this - high
ranking in the search engines does not equal profit. What brings you profit
is a good product or service, an excellent website with valuable content and
a great conversion rate of visitor into customer. 99% of website owners think
their problem is lack of visitors - it's not, it's lack of understanding of
what it takes to convert the current visitors into customers. Only worry about
your search engine ranking if you've got all other elements of your business
and your website as close to perfection as they can be.
3.5 They're not the be all and end all.
There are lots more ways to attract visitors than just via the web than search
engines. Website owners who really know their stuff and have invested 100s of
hours marketing their website attract lots of their visitors via sources other
than search engines - directories, links etc. If a search engine goes bust or
changes the way it ranks you and you rely on it too heavily you can suffer in
a big way. If the vast majority of your traffic comes from many, many links
then you can still continue to thrive.
Remember - traffic from search engines should be treated as an additional source
of visitors to your website - not the only source.
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