Stop Your Over Reliance On Google As The Way Others Find You
Lets put it straight on the line, your regular payments to Google for your ‘pay per click’ campaign is not necessarily the answer to your business growth. The alternatives to searching for you are now bigger than ever.
It’s time to think about stopping the over reliance on Google.
Google search engine traffic has dropped more than 30% from August 2012 to March 2013 (according to Buzzfeed). In simpler terms, Google is losing customers.
People use a search engine to look for something as a last resort when they can’t find anything. From within my own company there is a clear gap between prospects that are familiar with the business (via engagement with our content) to those who arrive direct from a search engine and not familiar with the business and lack of an initial dialogue.
What I’m eluding to is that there are now many other places where recommendations and relationships can be formed, as opposed to wholly putting your eggs in the Google basket. More human social interaction is now being generated and changing the way that we all search for information online.
From looking for recommendations via TripAdvisor/Amazon; new team members via LinkedIn; ‘how to’ videos via YouTube or endorsements from Twitter/Facebook we are changing from searching the web like the Yellow Pages (look what happened to them) to creating a more customised and human approach. Google’s hold is not as dominant as it once was. Lets even look at Siri, Apple didn’t buy it to augment to the overall iPhone experience, but to be a thorn in Google’s side when it comes to voice activated search.
More and more of us are now taking charge and taking the control away from Google to our marketing strategies becoming more social and interactive (lets not ignore effective SEO and writing great content). We don’t want a large number of shaded ‘paid for’ links on our screens, we want to know the answer to our question is reputable and trusted. We do this by building knowledge and creating humanlike search engines.
Too many businesses have an over reliance on Google as the prime online sales tactic and whilst it is still a mammoth, it is our choice to stick with the ‘same old, same old’ and let Google make as much money out of us as they can, or take a more human approach and build communities around those we represent.
The ultimate goal is for people to find you and recognise you as the logical choice. The days of thinking that search is solely via a box on Google is no more.
Image courtesy of Flickr: V&A Steamworks
