Google ranking is for hobbyists
Godfried Bomans, a Dutch writer, always talked about his family. He would mention uncles and aunts endlessly, always changing their names, ages; they didn’t exist — they were simply a vehicle to introduce his story.
My single most important lessons are like that.
The single most important search engine lesson in ranking I learned at Cre8asite Forums is why?
When I came to Cre8asite Forums I was blessed with ownership of a personal site, a family site, so the why of things didn’t touch me that much really. You have a site. You want traffic. Gotta be in Google. Rank. When you rank, you get more traffic. Happiness, bliss, a dreamy smile on my face — life is beautiful.
“So what do you want to do with that traffic?”
Money
As a hobby my site didn’t need to bring in any money — which is precisely why ranking mattered most.
Ranking is for hobbyists. Traffic is for amateurs. Money is for professionals.
When you want to make money you need exposure. Ranking #1 equals top exposure. Ranking #1 in the #1 search engine is ultimate exposure. Therefore ranking #1 in the #1 search engine means top dollar.
Google is the #1 search engine. Better yet, the over half of US Internet users who prefer Google tend to be richer. Bingo! $$$
This is why ranking #1 for the #1 search on the #1 search engine is essential to your online business.
Liar…
Lies & Damned Lies
If Google users are wealthier and savvier online, and if Google is the search engine of choice for more than half of U.S. Internet users, then these survey results reinforce the notion among many businesses that it is critical for them to appear in Google search results or Google search ads or both, more so than in competing search engines.
• Source: PC World
Is it?
Hitwise, tracking over half a million websites, shows that 10.8% of online retailers visitors were hand-delivered by Google.
However, the greatest source of visits to the Shopping & Classifieds sites was shopping sites themselves, at 49.5 percent, as a result of online users’ directly visiting several retailers within an internet session.
• Source: Marketing Vox
For those interested, Yahoo delivered 4.1%, MSN 0.8%.
“Well, it’s still clear-cut: if I can convert 2% of Google users I make cash big time!”
But can you and, much much more importantly, do you?
Recently I worried where people got Google-type traffic elsewhere. Until I looked better at the stats. Although Google delivered much more traffic than MSN, MSN users were trice as likely to click on an ad and almost twice as likely to buy something. When I was able to correlate visitors with sales the total income delivered through MSN was higher than the sales made through Google. Additionally, the MSN users on that site tended to become more loyal visitors than the Google people did. They tended to stay longer on the site. Read more pages.
“But in my case…”
If ranking #1 on the #1 search engine is essential to your business model — your model is wrong.
That’s worth a paragraph on its own.
One Reply to “Google ranking is for hobbyists”
I had to comment on your “Ranking is for hobbyists. Traffic is for amateurs. Money is for professionals.” I love that. I must be all three since I have several blogs. Some I use for work/monetize while others I have my SEO rants, family recipes, and real estate posts which brings me to my point. I am eclectic at best but have to admit this continuous SEO road less traveled has kept me up on my toes.