Skip to content

Google sandbox over emphasized

Mike Grehan, the founder and CEO of Smart Interactive Ltd., a wholly-owned European division of MarketSmart Interactive Inc., the world’s largest search engine marketing company, has got a nice post about not getting caught up in Google sandbox fears (not allowing high ranking of new domain).

It just defies reason to imagine Google doesn’t want to provide fresh, relevant material to its end users. Do end users not want choice? Do they not want a variety of old, trusted favorites combined with new products, services, and information? Has Google really discovered its end users only prefer nine-month-old sites?

A few months ago, the TV show winner was a no one. A search for his name prior to the TV show probably would’ve turned up nothing. But once he gained some popularity with the TV audience, people turned to search engines for more information.

If a search engine can detect a stream of queries, that is, a demand, where the keywords don’t return enough relevant material in the tiered index, be certain it’ll fill the area. Because if end users don’t find the info there, they’ll go somewhere else for it. They won’t wait nine months for Google to serve it up……The mere thought of some pimply SEO geek sitting with a proper marketing organization trying to explain to the marketing VP what a sandbox is, is almost laughable, if it weren’t so serious. There are dozens of reasons companies fail offline. And, believe me, the same applies online.

In addition, Mike states the obvious. Search engine marketing is only one component of an effective Internet marketing campaign.

Here’s a marketing channel selection analogy. New entrants can use a push strategy, a pull strategy, or, given the resources, the classic push-and-pull strategy. A push strategy tries to induce intermediaries to carry, promote, and sell your products to end users. End users have to find your products on the shelf to gain awareness of them. A pull strategy uses advertising and promotion to induce customers to ask for the product, thus inducing the intermediaries to order it.

It’s rather like old-style SEO versus marketing-led SEO. Old-style SEO was about using certain technology tricks to push a client’s Web site into the charts. But that doesn’t work anymore like it used to. However, by using integrated marketing techniques to create awareness, build your brand, and create end-user demand, you can pull your clients into the search engine charts.

I tell clients blogs do achieve decent search engine rankings when optimized. However, how fast they achieve high rankings depends on how much content is already out there on the topic. I also tell clients that search engine performance is about a 20% component of blogging. It’s the networking and enhancing one’s reputation that are the real reasons for blogging. Work on the 80% of the reason for blogs and don’t worry about the 20%.

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted in: