Webmasters Should Expand Their Advertising Scope

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 9 of March , 2008 at 5:23 pm

I agree with Roderick Ioerger on Gabriel Goldenberg. What Goldbenberg really means is that webmasters need to develop an independence from search engines, but I really don’t know how that’s possible. Search engines and Search Engine Optimization is the primary source of traffic for almost every webmaster. If you replace Google with Facebook, StumbleUpon, or any other site then you’re faced with the same problem: A simple change in policy could seriously hurt your web site traffic. I think, personally, that past search engine behavior can be a good predictor of future search engine behavior and if you study the former then you can place your bets on the most likely direction of the latter, which is what webmasters should be doing anyway.

That said, I take issue with Goldenberg’s initial maxim:

* If knowledge is power;
* If information is knowledge;
* And if Google is organizing - and, more importantly, distributing - the world’s information;

Then isn’t Google the single most powerful organization in the world?

What he left out is a fourth point, namely, that IF most of the world’s information is online …. But, of course, it isn’t. Which means Google is not the single most powerful organization in the world. And, last I checked, Google’s primary business is not the distribution of information, but the organization, or indexing, of information. So Goldenberg’s initial premise is the first step in the wrong direction, but I do agree with a lot of what he says.

The five things he says webmasters need to do to be free of search engines (ie Google) are:

1. Use alternative search engines for your own searching.
2. Find alternative sources of traffic.
3. Develop alternative sources of revenue.
4. Create sites you’re passionate about.
5. Look at offline tie-ins and monetization opportunities.
6. Bonus (always underpromise and overdeliver): Block Google’s robot.

All of these points are good and there is something to learn from each of them. Goldenberg does a good job of explaining that webmasters need to diversify and not place themselves entirely at Google’s mercy. One point he does make about AdSense, giving his own experience as an example, is that you can’t expect to earn a lot of money from AdSense on blogs. Well, duh!! Blogs are not good for AdSense, but static web sites are great. If they weren’t, no one would be making any money on AdSense and Google AdWords would not be a good advertising model for advertisers.

One final note: Roderick Ioerger makes the best point about secluding the Googlebot from your site. You really don’t want to do that. It’s risky business. I totally believe in targeting specific search engines based on your product or service and tailoring your Search Engine Optimization efforts to each search engine, but I don’t see any benefit from excluding a specific search engines from crawling your web site in most cases. This is especially true for beginning webmasters. You should only take that step if you know that you can get traffic from other sources that will pay you for your webmastering and Search Engine Optimization efforts. Otherwise, you’ll just be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Category: Search Engines

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