Why Google Still Matters
In this internet age of social media madness, there have been dozens of articles written by marketing “experts” discussing statistics between Google and social media giants like Facebook. Many of these articles discuss how Facebook is taking Google’s place in terms of shear numbers of people using and visiting the site vs. Google. As of this writing, Google still holds the #1 spot and Facebook holds the #2 spot in the rankings. Even with Facebook at #2 though – a lot of entrepreneurs and marketers would like to ignore Google and simply focus on Facebook traffic from fan pages and Facebook ads. Let me explain why, why I will not use it as my marketing model, and why I think Google still matters today.
Why Some Entrepreneurs Are Relying On Facebook
I’ve mentioned in earlier articles that there was an update made to Google’s algorithm (nicknamed the Farmer update) which has changed some of the rankings for sites and individual articles on sites. Some businesses have seen better rankings with this shift, others have pretty much stayed the same, and a few saw a serious drop in ranking a.k.a. traffic to their sites. It is many of these marketers and their friends:) that have decided to make a shift to focusing on social media sources such as Facebook.
Facebook is the second most visited site on the web. I only know a handful of people who do not have a Facebook account and they are over the age of 50. So it is not surprising that marketers and business owners are flocking to this very social and active site. Your prospects are on there. That’s a given. There are very few niches who do not have prospects on Facebook and of course you can create your own Facebook Fan page or Facebook Group to attract those people to you and what you do.
There is also the growing popularity of Facebook ads. Once they were not so favored upon – the conversion was awful, but as the site has grown into the mega giant that it is – the popularity and conversion of Facebook ads have seemed to have taken a turn for the better. In fact, there are experts so disillusioned with organic search a.k.a. Google that they teach people how to create Facebook ads that convert and that sell, etc. They teach these types of techniques because they believe that it is a mistake to depend on the search engines for your traffic as you can be dropped from the results at their whim and in turn lose a lot of business.
I cannot deny that Facebook is an extremely viable option for creating relationships, building communities, and really connecting with people who may want to do business with you in the future. Yet having said that – relying on Facebook for traffic to my site is not my marketing model because…
People Use Facebook and Google Differently
Although I realize that Google has attempted to jump in the social media pool (Google Buzz), the truth is – is that they aren’t very good at it. I mean I don’t know that many serious marketers who even bother with Buzz — not when there’s Twitter. So let’s just put that out there. Google does not do “social” really well. BUT that’s what makes the two powerhouses different. People use Google and social media sites very differently.
Think about it.
When you want to do a little research on dog food or gardening tips, you don’t go on Facebook to search for this type of information – for solutions. You go to Google. You “Google it”. When I want to see what one of your old friends from high school is doing, you go to Facebook. Now you may also visit my Article Marketing Income Fan Page, but maybe that’s because you were already logged into your account and saw something interesting come up on your wall that I posted to my page. So you stopped by – which I appreciate by the way:) But that’s another point…
People drive traffic to their Facebook Fan Pages. Google doesn’t have to do this (in terms of search anyway). We are already programmed to use Google to search for information. They don’t have to do anything fancy to lure us there. The statistics are clear. Google dominates search. Yahoo and Bing come up a far distant second and third. Which totally supports my position that…
Google Still Matters — A Lot!
Google by far is the dominant tool used for search. They also own YouTube which is the #3 site in the rankings. Where your content lies in Google matters very much and instead of trying to beat the system, cheat the system, or be mad at the system — the much easier alternative is to learn the system and get in where you fit it! The marketers who “hate Google” or who are finding this powerhouse all of sudden not as relevant as it use to be are what I like to call “haters”.
They hate the fact that they have lost some of their “free” (by the way:) traffic to their sites because Google has penalized them for either bad backlinking or content farming. They hate the fact that they were able to obtain terrific traffic by creating mediocre at best content — but now are finally being held up to a higher standard.
The rules are simple with Google.
Write informative content and publish it to relevant outlets (including your own site) and you should never encounter any problems with Google. I know I haven’t, and it’s been since 2002 for me. In fact, you are rewarded with great positioning in the search engines which brings you a ton of new traffic; but if you write junk and spread that same junk around to hundreds of other sites — Google will penalize you and off you and your site go into the bottomless sandpit.
Conclusion
As I have mentioned before in other articles, the economy is affecting the way many marketers do business online. Many entrepreneurs simply don’t have the disposable income to throw around on the latest marketing strategy. Finally, business owners are being forced to make smarter decisions about what they will spend their money on and what strategies they will use to market their businesses — so with that in mind — it would be foolish for you to not consider focusing on search engine traffic (which is 100% free) as a major part of your marketing strategy.
Ready to learn more about how to write content especially for Google. Content that Google will love and rank high, which will send you steady streams of search engine traffic. Stay tuned for more news about my upcoming event which will teach you how to write, rank, and stay ranked in Google and the other search engines!
I agree with you for the most part but Facebook are relentlessly innovating, and should they be working on their own form of social search (which is my hunch), Google will find them more and more difficult to compete.