Quote:
Originally Posted by Grey Moth
if you are there in the engines, you are there.
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I dunno, on the two forums where I moderate we hear from an
awful lot of business owners who thought that same as that and woke up one day to find their sites AWOL in Google (or Yahoo or MSN, or occasionally two of them, or even all three).
Doesn't have to mean you've been banned or that you did anything to anger the "SE gods." Algorithm updates, datacenter sync issues, general glitches, unintended side effects of well-intentioned site "improvements", loss or devaluation of a few powerful inbound links... there are any number of reasons why a seemingly invulnerable SE position can disappear overnight. Of course, there are also the situations where you -- however innocently -- did do something against the SEs' TOS. Anybody remember the Traffic Power debacle from a few years back? Lot of businesses who thought "once you're in the search engines, you're there" who found out differently then.
And the sad part is, if you've focused all your attentions on the "free" listings in the SEs, when your site disappears, you're pretty much sunk. It isn't easy to have to tell desperate business owners they've made a bad decision and now have to either start shelling out money they never budgeted to advertise or watch their business go down the drain, but unfortunately there's not much else we can do. Nobody can
force the SEs to even index their site, much less award it high rankings.
On the other hand, once you post a video to YouTube it will stay there (unless it violates the law or the TOS of YouTube, of course) for all to see. Create a "channel" to house all your videos, and they'll all be right there and handy for anyone searching on your company name or on the topic of any of the videos.
And videos show up in regular search in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Of course, this assumes you have something "video-worthy." There are plenty of videos out there that some company made because they thought they were "supposed" to make videos.
If you don't have compelling video content, don't make a video.
But you may be surprised at what can be made video-worthy. I cited the example of Blendtec above. If you haven't looked at their "Will It Blend" series, you really should. (Trust me on this one.) Who would have thought kitchen blenders would make an excellent source of hilarious -- and astoundingly effective -- video content? But they did, and Blendtec has seen spectacular sales and revenue growth since they started the series.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everybody needs to rush out and make videos. What I am saying is if you have or can think up something worthwhile you'd be remiss to overlook the potential of video -- or any other potential marketing channel, for that matter.
There is no need to focus
only on a single channel. In fact, I'd say it's a very very bad idea. It's a dangerous game, putting all your eggs in one basket -- whether that basket is organic search, PPC, video, social marketing or whatever.
Absolutely, focus your attention
primarily on the channels where you get the best bang for the buck. But I'd suggest to not write off any channel entirely. Your audience may shift their priorities and surfing habits at any time and on a moment's notice. If possible, you want to be sure no matter where they go, they'll find you already there waiting for them.
--Torka
Youtube Versus Google
