The Google alternatives
This month, Google announced with a fanfare its new indexing system, Caffeine. In addition to the new moniker, suggesting an effect similar to the coffee scene in Alvin and the Chipmunks, came the information that “Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database…”.
If you are an online business, that’s an exceptionally large haystack for your needle to be found in. It’s no wonder that smaller companies find it increasingly challenging to achieve good rankings on Google.
Google is still the primary source of new site visitors, but with so much competition you need other strings to your bow.
Here are some alternatives:
1. Other search engines
The merger of Yahoo!’s search business into Microsoft’s Bing will give MS almost 10% of the massive search market. Bing uses slightly different ranking factors from Google, giving more weight to keywords in the URL and to visual media. A site optimised for these factors could fare better on Bing than on Google.
2. Social sites
Social sites are the online equivalent of business networking. They are not for overt self-promotion, but places to interact with like-minded people, share information, provide comment and build a reputation. The main ones are LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us and Digg.
3. Marketplaces
Marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and PlayTrade are price-competitive and take a percentage of each sale. But they are great for building up a customer base which you can drive to your own site using email marketing and special offers, as well as offloading old and over-stocked items.
4. Affiliate marketing
At the last count, affiliate schemes like Affiliate Window accounted for 17% of online sales. The cost of entry can be fairly high, but the potential rewards speak for themselves.
5. Traditional marketing
Ciel Bleu sells country-style home accessories at craft fairs and the like, using its web site to sell and interact with customers between events. The site is optimised for Google, but does not rely on it. Thousands of other small businesses are effectively promoting their sites through advertising, direct mail, local marketing and even word of mouth.
Do you have any other tips you want to share?
Bruce Townsend of ecommerce software specialist, Actinic.
