Ignoring Google Is Your Best Bet For Success

We read it every day in the webmaster forums around the web. Google changed their algorithm and my site disappeared. Webmasters around the world are in a constant state of flux as they chase Google's tail. My recommendation for a more stable site... forget about the Googles of the world.

If you launch a site that has gardening information that can be found in 1000 other sites, yeah, no one is going to talk about it or link to it unless you buy links. This is fine for traffic, but don't expect Google to give your site preference over the 1000 other sites with the same type of content just because you have a good team of writers and great content.

Google's approach seems to reward sites that have built up their trust and links over time... the natural way. Very few sites hit stardom in a few months... which is what everyone wants for their site. It takes many years... which is the way it should be...

Another interesting point relates to SEO folks who try to "adapt" to each of Google's changes over the years. This could also be the source of some of your problems, if indeed you are having problems.... I try not to follow what Google is doing, I simply work on providing the best site/service for our users. Yes, I make sure my site is accessible to search bots, I'd be foolish to design otherwise, but I don't get caught up in the latest Google algorithm change. Instead I focus on building relationships with news reporters and other sites, building quality communities where folks want to participate and share information, and keep my site running smoothly, fast and efficient...

This approach of pretty much ignoring the latest trends has helped my sites slowly grow each year in revenues and traffic.

Am I immune to losing our Google traffic? No, of course not. But if it does happen, I'll still have my community of users and members that I have grown over the years to help keep the site growing. I'll also have our newsletter I've built up over the years, along with all the naturally acquired inbound links from news sites and blogs. All of those were made possible due to the fact that my sites offer a good service that filled a need at a time when not many others were filling that need.

So the real answer is not to start building/updating your new site based on the latest Google trend, but rather build your new site based on what the consumers/users of the world need right now, or what they might need tomorrow

Launching a Newsletter

Along the topic of visitor retention is newsletters. For years I was too preoccupied to explore this marketing angle, until about 6 months ago. I decided it was high time I started taking advantage of my growing registered user base. First things first, I needed to decide between building my own custom newsletter program or going with an open source script or just flatout purchasing a service package from one of the many online vendors. Since I had no time (as usual) I opted to outsource my newsletter. I chose StreamSend.com. They seemed reputable and cheap ($49/month for up to 50k emails). One of my biggest fears was partnering with the wrong company and next thing I know my users are being bombed with spam. I had learned of StreamSend from a Chitika newsletter. Being a bit lazy, I did a little google reasearch and finally decided if StreamSend was good enough for Chitika, then they are good enough for me.

Signing up was easy, and uploading my list of registered users was even easier. It simply required a flat file of the address, which I created with a quick MySQL query. It even did some basic format validation and helped me clean up and remove some old invalid addresses.

Creating the newsletter was quite easy as well. They have a decent web editor that lets you customize your newsletter for both HTML-based and text-only email clients. Any links embedded in the newsletter can be tracked to monitor how many clicks each receives (very handy). Sending the newsletter can be done real-time or scheduled for a later date.

The reporting shows the standard success/failure delivery stats. How many recipients opened the mail, etc. One interesting feature allows you to see who reported your newsletter as spam. I found it interesting because my users all opted in when they registered at my site, but I was still getting a fair number (50 or so) per newsletter that reported it as spam. I concluded that some folks must simply use the spam button for convenience instead of unsubscribing. I have even done that myself in some cases. You can bet I won't do that anymore! Most (if not all) of my spam reporters were from AOL, so they must have a spam button feature easily available.

My biggest lesson learned is that if you send out a newsletter, there is no guarantee folks will read it. I found it very difficult to get my open rate above 25%. Before I started, I would have thought it would be easy to get a 50% or more open rate. But as with most things on the web, you have to sell your product very well. You need to know the best times to send it out for your user base. A late Saturday night newsletter may get lost in a full inbox come Monday morning if your target audience is mostly working adults. You need a catchy yet non-spammy title. Then, even if you get them to open it, you have to get them to read it. I try to follow similar standards as I would for a webpage. Keep the layout simple and informative. Too much text or clutter and they will skip it and move on. Make the links useful and relevent to the content. And most importantly, treat your readers as you would like to be treated.

Newsletters can be a great tool for keeping in touch with your user base, and growing your return visitors. But don't under-estimate the amount of work and effort that is required to run a successful program. Do you homework up front. Reaearch newsletters you already receive. What do you like and dislike about them. Subscrible to yourcompetitor's newsletters. This can be a great way to not only stay on top of the competition, but also pick up on any tips/tricks they might be using in their newsletter.

How To Keep Visitors Coming Back

I wanted to comment on an area that many new webmasters often ask about: How do I keep my users coming back? This is a key attribute of many successful sites. Building your repeat visitors helps grow you site naturally over time. It also helps reduce your dependency on search engines.

Fresh content is one of the main drivers for folks to come back to a site. As a starting point, I recommend taking a good look at your homepage. Each day when you visit, do you instantly see if new content is available? Are the more active sections of your site highly visible?

As a general rule of thumb, I recommend integrating more of the "new" content into your homepage. When a user first visits, you never want to give the impression there was not much going on. Try integrating related latest news on the homepage using an authoritative RSS feed. Perhaps you could also integrate the latest comments/posts from your forum section into the homepage. Do users register on your site? You can add a box that shows the latest registered users with links to their profiles. Focus on any sections of your site that seem to get the most activity, and bring those dyanmics to the homepage.

Once your site has a steady flow of new content, you will want to add the ability for users to subscribe to your content. This is done with RSS feeds. Most blog tools have this built in already. If you are running your own site/script, you can find countless free scripts/services on the web for creating your own feeds.

Make it easy for visitors (and return visitors) to see/find new content, and they will be more likely to return.

Getting More Traffic

With my newly found revenue stream and revived faith in the internet economy, I turned my attention to traffic. I had this useful site with loads of content, but my traffic was still pretty low when compared to my peers. I was getting less than 10k visitor/month. That is when I started doing some research into the world of search engine optimization (SEO). I realized a huge market of potential visitors was going untapped due to the design and layout of my site. It was friendly and easy to use for visitors, but not for search engines. One of the first steps I took was to create more relevant and meaningful titles and meta descriptions for all my pages. Since most of my site is database driven, this involved some creative modifications to my templates/scripts. Next I focused keywords. I redesigned my main pages to use actual header (H1, H2, etc) tags. I simplified the pages. Just content and links to other related content on my site.

Later I would embed much of my non-content code (like navigation, menus, etc) into javascript includes. This would leave the actual source of my pages very clean from a search engine crawler's perspective.

Another strategy I worked on was translating my current content into more pages. More pages means more chances for folks to find me. I took my posts that had lots of content and split them up into pages. Not only did it make the readability better, but it increased my page count by about 30%! Next I offered different views to my content. One technique that worked really well was to offer local search capabilities. This allowed me to generate tons of new content focused on locale, and integrated location based keywords throughout my site.

My general rule of thumb was to examine the data I already had, and figure out ways to better expose it. By opening more of my content up to users, I was opening the doors wider for the search engines as well. The results were incredible. Over the next year, my traffic went from 10k to 50k to 100k a month!

It is important to note that the primary driver behind all this success is good content. My site has grown "naturally" with unique content over the years. This natural growth trend is much more attractive to search engines than a new site that suddenly has 100,000 pages. It takes a lot of patience and research, but it will all pay off in the end.

Next up... Adding Revenue Streams...