"Werq" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of Keywords People Usecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years.
Speaker 1:
Hi, this is episode 85 of SEO. Is not that hard. Today I'm going to be asking the question should we be giving up on Google search or should you give up on Google search if you've been hit recently? But before I get into that, I just wanted to say that I'm at the moment I'm looking for people to send in any SEO questions they've got. There's a link in the show notes where you can record a short question. You can ask me anything you want and you could get featured in a future podcast. But with that said, let's get on with the rest of the show.
Speaker 1:
At the moment, obviously, with the Google updates going on, the Google spam update actually finished rolling out a few days ago, on the 20th of March. One of the two updates is now completed. If you've still got your traffic, then you know at least it's not the spam one that you're being hit for. But obviously at this time we've still got the core update still rolling out and there's probably another at least another week at the time you'll be listening to this that it will still be going on. Now lots of people have been hit and lots of gurus have been hit. Lots of SEO influence have been hit.
Speaker 1:
I'm seeing a lot of people out there saying they're going to pivot Pivot is one of the words of this these updates where we've got lots of influence, especially who've been hit, and then after that how they're going to pivot to other traffic sources. So they are saying they've had it with Google and they're going to go elsewhere. And I've also seen lots of other people who aren't influencers but are equally as downhearted on where to get traffic from and downhearted with Google, and are looking to move away and say we're given up on Google, we don't, they don't need Google anymore. Is this the right thing to do? Is this the right way to spend your time and efforts? Because obviously you know, we've only got so many hours in the day, we've only got so many resources, so we have to pick and choose where to go to get the best result in the long run for ourselves. So should we be moving away from Google Now?
Speaker 1:
How I'm going to answer this question is by not getting emotional about it, not being annoyed with Google, because I can understand how it's annoying and I've been there lost traffic. I know it's annoying and you do get very emotional. It is like the seven stages of grief. But if we go back, take a step back and say, actually, let's look at the data, what are the other options? What you need to do is you need to look at where traffic comes from on the internet, and just recently, sparktoro did a study where they looked and they collected all the data around who the web's largest traffic referrers are. So this is where we can look and say where are the places that send traffic out onto the web? And they looked at Google, bing, microsoft, youtube, facebook a whole bunch of places that there's hundreds and hundreds of referrers.
Speaker 1:
Now I'll put a link to this report in the show notes, but the basic highlights of it are that Google sends 63.41% of all web traffic, so they send two thirds of all traffic to websites comes from Google. Of the remaining third, let's have a look at who the big players are. Next we've got Microsoft and Bing, who send 7.21% of traffic. So that's almost 10 times less traffic is sent by Bing than compared to Google. Next we've got YouTube on 3.5, 7%, facebook on 3.54%, reddit on 2.95%, twitter 2.31%, yahoo 1.9%, duckduckgo 1.86%, instagram 0.84%, amazon 0.82%, linkedin 0.69%, 0.56%, and then the next 155 sites send 10.34%. So you can see, amongst them there's not even one that really has a big share Bing, microsoft. They send a bit, but if you're doing one in Google, you'll do one in Bing.
Speaker 1:
There's not like all of a sudden you're gonna suddenly be able to recover your lost Google traffic by relying on Bing. You'll still get some from them, but you're never gonna get back. You're gonna get back like a ninth, a 10% of that traffic. The reality of it is that if you want significant amounts of traffic from the web, you need to be in Google and, with a few exceptions, depending on your niche, you might find that you can build an audience on YouTube or Facebook. But again, with all of these places, you're still playing in someone else's garden. You're sending someone else his sandpit and they're gonna have their rules, and those rules are gonna be subject to change. At time I remember not, it was a while ago people used to get lots of traffic from Facebook and then Facebook all of a sudden just changed their rules and just cut off that flow of traffic and everyone then had to start advertising.
Speaker 1:
So while it's understandable to be very frustrated and want to sort of stick the finger to Google and say, well, I'm gonna go off and do my own thing, the reality is that's not really an option. If you do that, you're really cutting off your nose despite your face. Now, I know that's easy to say, and if you're in the situation where you've lost your traffic or a good chunk of your traffic, then it's no real consolation and, I'm sorry to say, there is no quick fix to go somewhere else to get your traffic. But there is a way back in Google. There's always a way back. It's as I say. I've been there myself.
Speaker 1:
I was heavily penalized back in the times of pandering Pegwin to the point where we lost all of our Google traffic bar a tiny little trickle. But we sat down, we worked through it. We honestly appraised our site and our methods and what we were doing, looked at what Google actually wanted and changed and experimented and got that traffic back, and it took time. It took time, but if we'd back then said that's it, we're not bothering with Google, we never would have got anywhere else with any other traffic source. We might have got a little bit here and there, but would we have built back up to where we recovered with Google? No way, because Google is the only game in town when it comes to significant traffic.
Speaker 1:
So well I understand everybody wants to walk away from it. There isn't really a pivot. That isn't a pivot away from Google. The pivot is to look at your site, look at your content and decide what is it we're gonna change. And sometimes that pivot might just be to say, actually, that site, that niche, whatever we're working on, we're actually gonna throw that away. We're gonna start again from scratch.
Speaker 1:
And yes, that's difficult, but at least this time starting from scratch. There's so many things you will know that you didn't know in previous times before. Even if it's just on the basics, on how to set a website or how to register domains, how to get a website set up, how to get designed and where to find people to do things. You know such a head start you have got when you're in that situation, even if you are completely starting again from scratch. But the truth of the matter is that Google is where the traffic is at and yeah, it's a monopoly. Yeah, it's unfair. Yeah, there are issues. Yeah, is it how the world should be? No, it shouldn't. But you can't deny the facts. That's actually how it is and we can rail and rail and rail against the. How unfair that is, how one-sided that relationship is.
Speaker 1:
But if you want to build websites, if you want to get traffic, if you want to grow a business online, then you need to have traffic from Google. You need to work out where you've gone wrong, on where to move forward and even if you haven't lost traffic, even if you're just plateauing, even if you've grown and you're at plateau and you don't know where to go next, the place is Google. The traffic is on Google. Now, with everything, there's obviously going to be exceptions to the rule. So, for example, there are some niches where YouTube will work well. That's if you're like trying to teach people something or build a personal brand, which is why you find lots of people who are telling you how to get traffic will suggest hey, come on YouTube, I did really well. But look, they are very specific niches and there are a lot of their upside on. There is setting courses and things like that, which is different to running a website.
Speaker 1:
If you're, say, any commerce site or if you are doing display advertising or if you're not advertising, you know YouTube might not be the way. Again, you know some people do well on Facebook and that will work in certain niches for the kind of content that people are looking for and will be attracted by when they're on Facebook, but it doesn't work for most sites. I mean, if you're looking at trying to decide an experiment with other things, I would say look at the graph, look at use that to determine how much time you should spend on certain places. So yeah, to me it's two thirds of time on Google. And then you know I should say more than that, because if you could say Google plus Bing together is, you know, 70 plus percent, and you know you should really be sending 70 percent of your time on search engines. And then you know, spend a bit the rest of your time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, experiment with YouTube, experiment with Facebook. You might find there is traffic there for you, depending on your niche, but even with those done well, the majority of your traffic is going to come from search engines and Google in particular. So I would still and my strategy is still to keep concentrating on search traffic like that, because that is where the people are and that is where people are sending traffic, and Google do want to send traffic out to people. All the other sources tend to like keeping the traffic to themselves. So Facebook likes to keep you in Facebook, you know. Instagram likes to keep you in Instagram. They don't actually want to send traffic elsewhere, whereas Google do want to send traffic elsewhere. Ok, yeah, they do keep plenty for themselves. I'm not saying they don't, but in general, their business relies on their organic results being good, because that's what draws people in, which means they can then put their adverts on and put, and that's how they earn their money.
Speaker 1:
If people weren't going there to find other places, then that's it Game over for Google. And even with SGE and all these other things coming along, there is still going to be a role on Google for sending people to other websites and that's it's core. So, yeah, don't be disheartened, don't give up on Google, because I think you can, and I've seen it happen before in the past with the little updates where people have said I'm going to go here, go there, do this. The next big new thing and I've still never, ever seen anyone really. You know mainstream it be able to get a guaranteed sort of traffic to beat what they could do on Google from anywhere else. So, yeah, so if you're in that situation where you have lost traffic, then the way to recovery in the long run is to get backing on Google, even if that means starting again from scratch. That is the way forward as far as I'm concerned and I wouldn't recommend anything else.
Speaker 1:
Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools that keywords people use, that you can book a free, no obligation one on one video call with me or I'll show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeopleusedcomdemo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up. Once again, that's keywordspeopleusedcomdemo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps. Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywordspeopleusedcom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusedcom To get an instant hit of more SEO tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick SEO tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel five on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusedcom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.