5 Ways to Get Lots of Non Google Traffic
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A lot of “us” focus on Google for traffic… which is smart, but is there a point in which it might be causing more harm then good?
I am not by any means suggesting that you do not focus on Google. There is no doubt that they provide massive amounts of traffic… but what would happen if suddenly Google decided to remove you from their rankings?
Would your site or blog be dead?
Over the past 30 days, the following non Google sources have provided traffic to JohnCow.com:
- 19% –> eMail – Mailing list & RSS
- 15% –> Affiliate Links promoting my free ebook
- 13% –> Stumbleupon – Was a few times but the biggest was to my free “Planning 2009 Guide”
- 12% –> Twitter – All over but two spikes are CPA Arbitrage post and “Planning 2009″ post.
- 7% –> Digitalpoint Forum – To the post about CPA Arbitrage
- 4% –> Digg – “2009 Planning Guide”
- 3% –> Tumblr – Consistent and mostly to the index page
- 3% –> Wikipedia – I owe Ranked Hard for this one… this is a link to a guest post they did
That is 76% of my traffic for the month of December!
In fact, Google only provided 14% of the traffic(the other 10% was a bunch of little things like yahoo, msn and so on).
So, whats my point of showing this?
If you want more traffic to your website or blog, do NOT put all your eggs in one basket, DO think outside of Google alone and DO get people talking!
Here are 5 things for you to think about:
- Are you building a mailing list (You NEED to do this for long term sustainability)?
- Are you building up a solid presense in different social media outlets (I have over 1600 followers on twitter now)?
- Do you create controversial content that will cause people to act (share, comment and come back for more)?
- Do you give away valuable free content that will cause people to act (share, comment and come back for more)?
- Do you offer an affiliate program of some sort to “encourage” people who promote you?
Ok, I know there is nothing earth shattering here… but if anything I hope it makes you think a little about how you are currently doing things and how you may be able to do things better!
The bottom line is it comes down to balance. Do not focus everything on Google… but on the other hand, do NOT ignore them either.
What are your thoughts on this?
tr td a:link, table#itemcontentlist tr td a:visited, table#itemcontentlist tr td a:active { color:#000099; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; } img {border:none;} John Cow dot Com5 Ways to Get Lots of Non Google TrafficPosted: 28 Dec 2008 11:13 AM CST A lot of “us” focus on Google for traffic… which is smart, but is there a point in which it might be causing more harm then good? I am not by any means suggesting that you do not focus on Google. There is no doub
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Good article, its necessary get traffic tou our projects without google.
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[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]
great…i am signing on tumblr now…
We should all focus on the whole SEO traffic, but Google does in fact do most of the work for us
-Mike
I think google is only important in the beginning stages of your blog, where every bit of traffic counts. Once you reach a healthy amount of traffic and visitors, you can easily double that by reaching out to your blog audience.
I agree with you Wesley, google probably helps out a lot in the beginning stages of a blog, but once you’ve generated enough traffic and targeted enough audience and subscribed readers, everything else will just come naturally.
I’ve focused more on Google since my blog is still rather new, but later on hope to start some type of affiliation in terms of marketing and what not.
Yes, During this time I got traffic from milis (300 visitors in a day), link exchange, forum, social network, and blog comments. But Google search is still the best one to get free traffic… to click adsense.
http://uniquetvcomm.blogspot.com
Those are all good sources of traffic. You definitely have to aim at different places than just search engines.
I just recently started my blog, and have found almost all of my traffic is coming from the social media sites I participate in. It takes so long to get ranked with Google that I don’t know how you can build up a following without doing this.
19% from email and RSS. It shows the importance of keeping in regular contact with your customers!
John,
Most of the return hits that you get from me are the result of your emails. Google has helped you in another way that you may not have thought about. I use Gmail. If I was using a less versatile email service I might be less willing to give my address to lists like yours.
Yes but relying on google for email is a different story entirely then relying on google for search engine rankings
Nice post John, really using only google for traffic is like digging your own grave. You need diversify more.
I quite agree with Wesley. When you’re just starting out it’s important to focus using the search engines especially google.com. This has helped me a lot.
However your point is also important. In fact I’m aiming at using most of those suggestions in the days ahead.
I’m an artist who’s fully embracing internet marketing as my method for reaching buyers. I’ve just recently gotten into the meat of figuring out traffic strategies for my handmade art jewelry; to my websites, blogs, Etsy shop etc.
I had been getting my nose a little buried in google, so your post reminded me not to get lost in the minutia of the behemoth search engine. Also, you mentioned a few sources for your traffic that I had not heard of before.
Thank you.
Great post and so very true. Question – I have been on Tumblr for a while now and use it to drive traffic to my work at home site but have not had the success I was hoping for. Any tips on how to get traffic to Tumblr and thus to my site?
thanks
Chris
Fantastic post there. It shows that search engine traffic is not the only thing to depend upon.
Are you finding that your TWITTER traffic is actually quality? Everyone seems to be promoting as the next big thing. But I’ve noticed tons of 0:00 page views from my twitter traffic in Google Analytics.
Any thoughts on this?
I think Twitter is being encouraged simply because it is so easy to add to your Internet Marketing Tool Box. To realize a lot of traffic from it, it must be utilized appropriately and regularly. You need a fair sized following, and most importantly, you need to be known as someone who shares good one liners, ie interesting, entertaining, ect. I like to find cool or strange news videos or something in Technological advancement, environment, ect as long as I think it is genuinely interesting or fun. Then once is awhile, I might post that I have posted a new post to my blog or a Squidoo Lens.
Twitter, like Google, is another of many tools to get traffic to your site.
Cheers!
Jeromy
http://www.twitter.com/Jeromys
The social media accounts for much of my traffic. Squidoo, Digg, Forums, ect. My percentage from Google is also less than 20%.
I suppose the challenge comes with a healthy sustanable balance with the whole mix.
A big challenge I am having is setting up my autoresponder and list…
Great article! Its good to remember to think outside of Google too!
Cheers,
Jeromy
Dear Mr. Cow,
Here, at our first, original site, we do things a bit differently.
You see, it is a blog-driven, charity-based site dedicated to honor the men & women of our Armed Forces.
That said, we do not collect e-mail addresses (no opt-in to an autoresponder for e-mail marketing). Because the last thing this site’s audience (military personnel) need is to be e-mailed about offers.
What we do is update, on Twitter which we have synched to my Facebook profile, any time someone leaves a story on our blog. Most of our traffic comes from Facebook.
We also have an RSS feed that anyone can subscribe to.
So, you see, we do things a bit differently here.
That said, I have another 1300+ domains now to build into sites where we will have opt-in lists and the other, more traditional traffic generating methods.
Thanks for this post. It was VERY good!
Best,
-K
http://www.for-the-troops.com/shop/
10% of after-tax proceeds goes to military charities!
I think if a traffic comes from other than search engine is futile if you have a monetised blog. If your blog is for goodwill purpose then i think you can infer social network sites usefulness. In any case content still matters. If you do not quality content why do readers stick around your blog?
Yes, I got lots of traffic from milis and group discussion. In one day I got more than 300 visitors from milis groups… But off course I hope the best ones from free Search engine like google or yahoo.
http://uniquetvcomm.blogspot.com
thank you for those awesome tips. now i9 can hope some visitors in my site.
Thanks for the tips. Never would have thought of wikipedia. The RSS feeds are definately a key. It guarantees that readers will see content in their browser, e-mail, or elsewhere. Readers often click through stories to arrive at the blog too.
Thanks for very good information and suggestions. I will certainly be starting 2009 with some good new ideas.
http://www.paullhamilton.com
I have a list of social networks I use too! I use Furl It too and I’ve been getting traffic from Blog Catalog:)
I never thought about it like that. I usually depended on G00Gle traffic being the main source which I should work on. Thanks to this post, I now have several great ideas to promoting my site.
Thanks,
Dennis
Great article about traffic generation. Indeed we need different way to drive traffic to our site. Even though google do bring us lots of traffic but we should not forget the other mean of getting traffic.
Hi
I have been reading your blog and I think there are great ideas in it.
even I do not have much traffic on my site but I hope that gradually change
Thanks for the ebook i´m reading it now
Yeah good thanx. Been real busy in “real life” stuff so Interweb has taken a bit of a backseat in the past 6 months or so. Must get the osword blog rocking again. How you?
I like to find cool or strange news videos or something in Technological advancement, environment, ect as long as I think it is genuinely interesting or fun. Then once is awhile, I might post that I have posted a new post to my blog or a Squidoo Lens.
I think I rely too much on Google for my traffic. Currently they provide about 50% of all the traffic to sites.
Gives me something to think about.
Steve
Google is a important but it’s not the player on the block. Don’t dismiss the others.
I guess your free Planning Guide 2009 is the main traffic generator
I need to apply this strategy in my business blog.
Thanks for sharing…
I have read your ebook; building a business, not a blog. I get a lot of knowledge in the new blogging. But I’m a most beginner, so I still have a lot of learning, including learning through your ebook. Hopefully your success can always find in 2009
thank a lot John.
This might not be earth shattering info (like you said) but, it does give a sense of ,what should i be doing more (or ) less of, since balance in anything is important.
You can eat too much or too little of anything so you need balance. You can exercise too much or too little , so you need balance. Its a great article.
Don’t forget about ppc! Yahoo and MSN aren’t monsters, but they can still send decent amounts f traffic with ppc.
I like the idea of ‘what if’ questions. They can be used to great effect in ANY industry and frequently result in novel solutions.
Many marketers have gone around looking for organic traffic simply by using pay-per-click for niche keywords. This seems to me preferable that alternatives such as buying lists, or shared-lists as alternatives to Google organic search results.
For the moment though I’m looking to Google for organic results.
Stephen
http://www.stephenbray.com
I love wikipedia traffic but it so hard for inclusion over there. Something new from your article is Tumblr. I signed up and try a fortune from this methode.
Thank you for this stats report!
Most of the newbies rely too much on google , since it is biggest search engine of all , however there are some other ways we could received good traffic
Thanks for highlighting
Makes sense to me! I have spent time developing my twitter precence recently, and its paid off! Still, need to spread my wings a bit more for 2009
I am agree with you we can generate huge amount of traffic from social networking sites and and get popular in very few times but with Google and other search engines we can constantly achieve huge amount of traffic.
Really great post and it shows that Google rankings are not the only thing that is to be focused in internet marketing. There are many sources which can drive you traffic. Personally I use different methods to drive traffic to my blogs such as Stumble Upon, Twitter etc. My lens at Squidoo related to best online paid surveys gets around 65% traffic from these other methods.
Thanks for this post. It gives me hope that with consistent efforts I can increase my traffic with or without Google. I’ll never disregard it, but it’s good to see these types of examples.
Thanks for the tips!!
In order to get traffic we need to do SEO to our site for Google to be crawled and get indexed in Google. Content should be unique to get quick traffic. Thanks for sharing.
Indeed, we must not depend only to one source (google) yet. Thanks for your advice. I agreed with you Jhon.
Having people come to your website is like having people coming into your store. You don’t want just one type of demographic. And if you do you plan on having them come from certain sources.
Having people come from all types of sources on the web is a much better online presence.
Interesting Post. It is easy to see how all the different methods all add up to form the big picture.
Getting traffic takes repeated consistent effort. It then comes.
I should count this on my list. I need to be more productive this year. Thanks to your advice.
Although it would be very beneficial for all search engines, it is hard to get ranked in yahoo and msn without paying them money. Google is most efficient. F.I.
Yes, we should not neglect other form of traffic to our site. But the major share goes to search engines like google, yahoo, msn and other.
I also do a lot of social media marketing as well.
Awesome post. I rely on google for around 30% of my traffic. Ill use your tips to promote my blog more.
i don’t get any traffic since i haven’t started blogging yet but i’m making a list of ideas people have in case i ever want to, i didn’t think rss would rank that high, i’m going to have to look into how to use it :/
I’m surprised to see tumblr bring in that much traffic. I’m wondering if your loyal readers have it bookmarked for convenience or is it a different group of readers.
can you suggest a way how to get email address of people for me to do email marketing?
@Donna,
One of the most popular ways to build a list for email marketing is to give something away. Most marketers do this with a free report or ebook.
Cheers!
Jeromy
Are you ok with this non google traffic you recieve now or you doing something extra to gain more and more of that? My thinking is that blogs has great future for receiving good targeted traffic.