wheel - 7:29 pm on Nov 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

It's not all bad to use search engine rankings as a marketing strategy. It's not even that bad to use search engine rankings as a *primary* strategy.

There's plenty of businesses who use only one marketing strategy and have never diversified. It's always a risk, it's just a bigger one when depending on the SE's.

What's happened is that the SE traffic is getting harder to come by, so some of it's drying up. But the folks that have been on the gravy train for 10 years, that's hardly a bad business strategy. Heck, I spoke to one guy said he 'lived in the house Google built'. Did enough business in the early 2000's that when his rankings dropped he didn't care - he had enough business. That sure sounds like his strategy worked :).

Unfortunately for me, I did other things in the last 10 years other than monetize SE traffic directly. Now I'm doing it, but the economy has tightened as has the traffic. So I am actively looking to expand using the old school stuff. In order I'm moving forward with:
- portraying myself as an expert. I've been on the radio once and in magazine articles twice in the past month, as well as getting articles published on serious blogs.
- adsense. working hard on that, long term plan is to have that as a reasonably stable source of traffic. I am planning on being dominant.
- direct mail. This used to be big in my industry decades ago. Now, rarely does anyone do it. I think there's opportunity there - and it's not that different than adsense quite frankly.
- Networking with centers of influence. There are some contact points with other businesses I am going to start appproaching.

I can't even handle all the traffic I get right now, but I do want to diversify - not just for diversities sake or stability sake, but so that I am dominant in my niche. That counts for something too - including the long term value of the business.