Do we really need Google???

[espectations]

Hi everybody,

Over the last couple of weeks I followed the discussions about what Google is up to. From very paranoid and "conspiracy theory" posts down to discussions where you need a PHD in mathematics to follow what is being said down to web site owners concerned about the fact that their sites are not being crawled by Google.

I posted this in response to a topic on a thread and then decided that I am now tickled to hear what the experts say - is there a school that will agree with me???

Please note upfront that I follow a holistic approach about search engines, marketing, positioning and optimizing - i.e. that it is not one single element but a combination of elements that render results.....

Here is my story:
I launched a new division in October 2004 - My holding company's site is http://www.e-spectations.com and the new division is http://www.smswarehouse.com

The split had nothing to do with traffic, search engine positioning etc. - it was a strategic decision that called for the SMS business to be split off from the online marketing etc. The reason why the sms is still on E-SPECTATIONS relates to the fact that EC works with the convergence of technologies and SMS now forms a great part of web sites in the target market that I work in.

Anyway, sites co-branded to send a message that it all belongs to the same group of people.

SMSwarehouse is hosted in North America and http://www.smswarehouse.co.za is parked at E-SPECTATIONS.COM seeing that EC is on a server in South Africa and my secondary target market is South Africa.

Since October, my site did not get any ranking in Google so I assume I am in the Sandbox.... (am still deciding about that theory...)

In January and Feb I saw Google crawling the site, but still nothing in Google. In January we launched downloadable software and I created a PAD file, listing the site with all the download sites - am still busy with it.

January I had a total of 4815 visitors and February 4651 visitors. Daily average visitors for January 155 and daily average visitors for February 166 which means February actually exceeded January but totals differ because of the short month.

......and I am still not in Google....when you type in site: www.smswarehouse.com you will not find the actual domain, but the blog, the RSS feeds etc.

Interesting thing though is that when I look for smswarehouse.co.za it is there......maybe because it is parked at E-SPECTATIONS.COM and E-SPECTATIONS.COM has been in Google since 2000?

Within the first week of launching the software, we had over 50 downloads of the software.....

Now I know that not everybody has downloadable software on offer on their sites but this makes me think - do we really need Google?????

I am positioning www.smswarehouse.co.za seperate from www.smswarehouse.com - .co.za targeting traffic in South Africa (South African engines and directories requires a .co.za address), and .com targeting the International market.

I run my blogs and RSS feeds which I update once a week - exchange links with sites that makes sense and are relevant to my topic of business. My html is validated and I try to keep the code clean. And I made sure my site is cross-browser compatible. Keyword research done, trying to stay within the said paramaters so that no keyword stuffing takes place, etc.etc.etc. In short white hat SEO and adhering to the rules of the engines.

I have other supportive data but this will make the post very long - bottom line is that I have no pagerank in Google but my site is performing and I am getting sales so the question arise - do we really need Google????

[Keimos]

Hi espectations,

No, we need the competition. All of them combine to make the whole.

If you can keep them all happy you are on a winner.

I have noticed that Yahoo and MSN are affecting things now.

We shall see in about 6 months from now.

Regards

Keith

PS. If its working do not change it.

[virtualtraveller]

Hi

Firstly, you will need 6 months or more to get out of the sandbox - depending on the kws you have targeted and how rapidly you get links. If your site isn't even ranking for an exact url search then perhaps there is a design fault in your code.

Google ranking is becoming much tougher for new comers unless you know of cloaking methods (which don't last), it's frustrating but basically as the Net (and SEO) gets older it take far longer to beat your way to the top. I have a new site which is content rich and does all SEO by the book yet it got nowhere on google for 6 months, luckily I began to see traffic from other SEs. When they let me out of the sandbox I ranked very well.

It has been said many times on this forum that basing your entire marketing strategy on Google SERPs is foolish, even though they account for a large chunk of traffic, they are also unreliable. It seems that your strategy to offer free downloadable software is working - of course it takes time for word to get around, but while busy getting links to help your googling, get genunine traffic links from other sites. If you have something free to offer which is useful then this shouldn't be too difficult.

My favourite saying in this game is 'the big wheels turn slowly in SEO' - you need to be patient and if you can't afford to wait for gradual growth then think about ppc.

[stephenmunday]

My site (www.japanese-name-translation.com) launched Jan 6th.

I am getting well over 1,000 visitors per day. Of these I would say that about 90% come from links in relevant pages / people's blogs. The other 10% are comprised of about 3% from Yahoo Directories (where I got listed for free within hours of the site being featured in USA Today :) ), 6% from Yahoo searches then maybe 0.5% from G and MSN respectively.

I get by far my best converting traffic from the relevant links. Yahoo gives me relevant traffic that is poor converting, but does at least give me something. G gives me almost nothing - as I am in the sandbox. In fact the G traffic I do get is mainly from my Froogle feed of my products displayed at the top of some G search pages.

Yes, I would love to have good G and MSN traffic as well, but thankfully I am able to do OK without at the moment and can use my exisiting traffic to optimize my pages for conversion.

(I just got listed in DMOZ as well, so I am guessing that next time G updates their directory I will be released from sandbox purgatory. After all, it would seem to be ridiculous for G to serve up results from my site in one area and yet completely ignore it in another.)

[stephenmunday]

My site (www.japanese-name-translation.com) launched Jan 6th.

I am getting well over 1,000 visitors per day. Of these I would say that about 90% come from links in relevant pages / people's blogs. The other 10% are comprised of about 3% from Yahoo Directories (where I got listed for free within hours of the site being featured in USA Today :) ), 6% from Yahoo searches then maybe 0.5% from G and MSN respectively.

I get by far my best converting traffic from the relevant links. Yahoo gives me relevant traffic that is poor converting, but does at least give me something. G gives me almost nothing - as I am in the sandbox. In fact the G traffic I do get is mainly from my Froogle feed of my products displayed at the top of some G search pages.

Yes, I would love to have good G and MSN traffic as well, but thankfully I am able to do OK without at the moment and can use my exisiting traffic to optimize my pages for conversion.

(I just got listed in DMOZ as well, so I am guessing that next time G updates their directory I will be released from sandbox purgatory. After all, it would seem to be ridiculous for G to serve up results from my site in one area and yet completely ignore it in another.)

[stephenmunday]

My site (www.japanese-name-translation.com) launched Jan 6th.

I am getting well over 1,000 visitors per day. Of these I would say that about 90% come from links in relevant pages / people's blogs. The other 10% are comprised of about 3% from Yahoo Directories (where I got listed for free within hours of the site being featured in USA Today :) ), 6% from Yahoo searches then maybe 0.5% from G and MSN respectively.

I get by far my best converting traffic from the relevant links. Yahoo gives me relevant traffic that is poor converting, but does at least give me something. G gives me almost nothing - as I am in the sandbox. In fact the G traffic I do get is mainly from my Froogle feed of my products displayed at the top of some G search pages.

Yes, I would love to have good G and MSN traffic as well, but thankfully I am able to do OK without at the moment and can use my exisiting traffic to optimize my pages for conversion.

(I just got listed in DMOZ as well, so I am guessing that next time G updates their directory I will be released from sandbox purgatory. After all, it would seem to be ridiculous for G to serve up results from my site in one area and yet completely ignore it in another.)

[stephenmunday]

My site (www.japanese-name-translation.com) launched Jan 6th.

I am getting well over 1,000 visitors per day. Of these I would say that about 90% come from links in relevant pages / people's blogs. The other 10% are comprised of about 3% from Yahoo Directories (where I got listed for free within hours of the site being featured in USA Today :) ), 6% from Yahoo searches then maybe 0.5% from G and MSN respectively.

I get by far my best converting traffic from the relevant links. Yahoo gives me relevant traffic that is poor converting, but does at least give me something. G gives me almost nothing - as I am in the sandbox. In fact the G traffic I do get is mainly from my Froogle feed of my products displayed at the top of some G search pages.

Yes, I would love to have good G and MSN traffic as well, but thankfully I am able to do OK without at the moment and can use my exisiting traffic to optimize my pages for conversion.

(I just got listed in DMOZ as well, so I am guessing that next time G updates their directory I will be released from sandbox purgatory. After all, it would seem to be ridiculous for G to serve up results from my site in one area and yet completely ignore it in another.)

[TrafficProducer]

From very paranoid and "conspiracy theory" posts

By even suggesting this Google may remove all the links they have to you...

paranoid .... Joke... maybe...

[espectations]

Hi everybody,

Well the fact remains that I am getting sales even though I am NOT listed in Google so this is not a complaint, merely stating a fact. March is month 6 - we will see what happens during March. In Yahoo and MSN my site is doing well and I tracked it down, that is where the enquiries and sales are coming from.

The conspiracy theory was not my idea, I read it in posts on this web site......please refer to the posts about SEO and the last filter Google did......

I agree it is a joke....and it should be read in the context of the whole post not just part of it.