Should I focus just on Google - or look elsewhere for taffic?

[shanzu]

One of the things that strikes me recently having lurked around the forums is how much time and effort people are investing in getting Search Engine (in particular Google) traffic and generally how problematic this is - Over the past few months alone posters have been verbose about - Penalties, Filters, the Sandbox (or lack of it), MFA's encroching on turf, Sites dropping in and out of SERPS on a daily basis - given that peoples time is limited and that the time spent on SEO is a form of investment should that investment be spent elsewhere - e.g. link building, Viral Marketing etc. Reading some posts it's clear that for some Search Performance makes or breaks some sites so are we spending our time wisely and is Google a reliable source of traffic? or have search engines had thier time and we should be looking elsewhere

Another Pondering... is the traffic that Google sends worthwhile anyway? For example is traffic from a search result as valuable as a referrer from a authorative site? Should we forget all about Google and focus our efforts getting traffic from elsewhere? and if we should where should efforts be focussed (yes part of it is content but that should be a given anyway)- anyone?

[nonni]

Definitely diversify and don't rely soley on the search engines.

I think search engine traffic is good to excellent quality traffic - when they enter on a relevant term. When Goog is stressed out and hallucinating, I get traffic from searches that are only distantly related to my website. That traffic is not so good - pageviews go down, etc.

[BigDave]

The discussion has been going on for years, not just months. The discussion predates Google

[Jane_Doe]

Google continues to get better and better at identifying and discounting or penalizing sites that rank high because of SEO tactics.

Plus over time more and more sites go online and more countries get Internet support structures in place there is more and more competition.

[martinibuster]

Aside from PPC, Google is a search engine, not a traffic source. Proceed accordingly.

[texasville]

Google, yahoo, msn, yada, yada, yada...there have been search engines come and go and these discussions roll on..
Relying on any se is foolish. Websites should be treated as any sales business but on a different level. The key word is networking. And I don't mean just trading links. (even tho with closely relevant sites this is important).
Network like you would in any business.

[night707]

Google continues to get better and better at identifying and discounting or penalizing sites that rank high because of SEO tactics.

Speaking just for one large quality site with unmatched content ...
Google has become a lot worse in terms of traffic, adsense revenue and kw relevance.

Also 2 urls from the same site rank on top since a while now for our main kw. In fact they even contradict the keyword meaning whilst our main index page vanished completely a few days ago.

For many keywords utter junk pages rule and Google seems to hit many quality publishers with real content.

I had liked Google a lot, but now big G is getting worse and worse.

[mibrahim]

I've been working with my website for three years now, and I learned that search engines are a very good source of referrals, but one needs to keep in mind that whenever a qualified, good lead comes to your website you have to have the material and content that would bring him back again.

Included in this are things like creating an account, updating users with accounts with new website features by email, ask web visitors for referrals. So my plan for the next two months is to work on things that would help bringing the same visitor back, and adding new users from visitors referrals.

I don't believe that this will be as much as I'm getting per day from search engines, but it is accumulative! what I'm getting from search engines now are one or a two day visitor.

[ulysee]

If you change your Hats around a bit then yes Google is still a reliable traffic source. :)

[joostvv]

Diversification is the key, the more sources of trafic you have the better it is.

If you have multiple sources it wont afect you that much if someone at "the plex" changes something.

[trinorthlighting]

For every site that gets knocked down, one rises.

I like to term it as ever-complain

[texasville]

>>>I like to term it as ever-complain <<<

I like that!