In the past few years, internet marketers have weathered some massive updates from Google. The first update came in May of 2010. This update is commonly referred to as the “Mayday Update.” This update hit niche marketing and “Google sniper” websites extremely hard. If you were running low-quality niche websites at that point, you probably saw a massive decrease in daily earnings.

Websites that were making $100 per day dropped to $5-$6 per day. That’s no small change, especially when you’re a full-time internet marketer. The second update was much more recent. In March of 2011, the “Panda Update” was released. Like the previous year’s update, the Panda Update devastated several high-income websites. Among these were Ezine Articles, HubPages, and Squidoo.
 
Once again, many internet marketers went from earning full-time incomes to just a fraction of that overnight. Here’s what you can do to make sure your website never suffers such a fate…

Google Isn’t the Only Player

These updates were massive and largely effective. There’s no denying that. However, today I’d like to point your attention away from Google and towards internet marketing in general.

Ask any internet marketer what the best traffic building strategy is and they’ll almost always say SEO. SEO has consumed our agendas. Because the traffic that comes from SEO is so automated and profitable, we’ve ignored almost all other traffic sources and focused exclusively on ranking high in Google.

When it works, it’s insanely profitable. What if Google makes an update, though? We already know the answer to this question. If Google makes an update that affects your website, you’re in for a world of hurt.

Treat your Website Like your Stock Portfolio

If you have $50,000 to invest in the stock market, how do you do it? Do you pick a single company and invest all $50k into that one company? Of course not! If that company hit a bad turn, launched a bad product, or had to file for bankruptcy, your $50k would be completely gone.

The best strategy is to diversify your stock portfolio. This means investing a few thousand into one company, a few thousand into the next, and so on. This way, if you start losing money with one company, there’s a large chance that you’ll be gaining money in another. Even if one company goes completely bankrupt, you’re only out a few thousand dollars (as opposed to all $50,000).

Focusing completely on SEO is comparable to investing all your money in one company. If Google makes an update, you’re going to lose a significant amount of income. However, if you focus on other traffic sources, such as social media or PPC, you can still earn income even if Google decides to completely remove your website from their rankings.

You’ve taken the power away from Google and put it into your hands.

Other Traffic Sources

Since ranking high on Google is the primary strategy for most internet marketers, most content writing strategies revolve around making your website search engine friendly. Although this is always a good idea, don’t get too caught up in writing for search engines.

Create content designed for people first, search engines second. By doing this, you open the door to social media traffic (it’s a big door), higher conversions with PPC advertising, etc. PPC advertising can be done on Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the content networks of all major search engines.

With Facebook’s new search patent, the future of SEO is murkier than ever. For this reason, it’s even more important to create excellent content and focus on marketing your business instead of focusing on getting Google to rank your website higher in the search rankings.

Additional Internet Marketing Tips

As you can see, there are a lot more options out there on the internet than just pleasing Google. Start working on some of them and make serving your visitors the number one focus. If you’d like to stay completely updated on the Facebook and Google search innovations and techniques, fill out the form below to sign up for our weekly newsletter!
 
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