Do I Need Google?

[Dean-123]

Is Google that important for my business to be successful online? I only read articles about how online businesses depend so much on Google for their own sake. I wonder if there’s a way to avoid this search Engine and still be successful.

[ktaylor310]

It depends on what type of business you have. For instance, I created a site for a photographer. Since she was only interested in local clients, search engine ranking wasn't that important to her. She used her site mainly as a portfolio that people were led to via mailers and other advertisements. She also posted proofs on her site to make the ordering process easier.

On the other hand, if you are selling to a national market you need to advertise somehow. Internet advertising is still the cheapest form of advertising, but only if you are not having to shell out a ton of money for pay-per-click ads. In this case, yes, natural ranking in Google is very important.

Here's some statistics for you from "HitWise"

February 28th, 2007

Latest Figures from Major Search Engine Traffic Analysis

These search engine statistics were presented by representatives from Hitwise, Neilsen/NetRatings and others at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in London.

Global search engine use:
- 256 million people visited a search engine in December 2006 – this represents 81% of global internet users.

- The global search audience has grown by 10% over the last year, while the total Internet audience grew 8%.

- Search engine use grew dramatically in France (27%) and Spain (21%), ahead of the US (8%), though the US remains the largest search market
Search is most popular in the UK (85%), France (83%) and Spain (83%). For the US, the figure is 77%.

- The average search engine user views 93 search pages a month, taking an average of 27 minutes.

Google’s global dominance:

- Google’s audience has grown almost 2.5 times the rate of search’s. It now has almost 3 times the audience of Yahoo Search.
Google had a 71.6% share of the global search market between August 2006 and January 2007.

- In the same period, Yahoo had an 11.1% share of the market.
From January 20 to February 12 this year, Google’s share dropped to 67.1%

Good luck!

[Dean-123]

yes,i understand your ideas,whether need search engine is depend on your bussiness's character and your company's strategy.
i want you to go to my website and give me your opinion of whether my website is need google,it just takes your 1 minute!
thank you in advance!
my website is :mytino

[Schmoozii]

Yes you need google. You can try to use the other search engines, but you will miss out on 80% of online traffic.

If you don't want to use Google, then you can bid on some of the freelance sites like odesk and elance. But they will charge you fees.

[bdorland]

FYI...Your homepage header image has a big typo...See "Wordwide" in yellow.

And yes, I would probably suggest you shift some of your focus to optimizing your site for Google. But, due to your subject matter, you're fighting an uphill battle.

[ktaylor310]

Uphill?? Up MOUNTAIN! If you are looking at organic seo (which could take years before you feel the impact), the first thing you need to focus on is letting Google know what your business is about - specifically. That is not going to be easy considering the range of service providers you are promoting, and the fact that a search on "find service providers" pulls up a grab bag of results including isp providers, adoption directories & healthcare services. Also there is the sheer number of sites that have been doing this for years before you launched your site and have earned the Google seal of trust.

Page rank doesn't seem to be a huge factor (#1 site is PR7, #4 is PR1), which tells me you can't put a whole lot of stock in backlinks boosting your rankings. For the time being anyway, I think you better look into PPC advertising. Then I would contact an SEO specialist and get some expert advice.

[ktaylor310]

Curiosity gets the best of me... Brody, would you even take a job like this considering the amount of time it would take to see a ROI?

[BruceWolf21]

I think Kim ("Uphill?? Up MOUNTAIN!") is right. . . . It's going to take a huge time and effort investment to break into Google's rankings on what have to be very competitive keywords. Besides focusing in on some less competitve keywords than you appear to be focused on (use 'Keyword Tools" on Google to check out the comptetiveness of your terms), have you considered focusing on local markets, rather than a global market? Local rankings are much easier to break into if you are registering with Google Local and optimizing specific pages for local search.

[WhereAreMyBiz]

it just takes time ktaylor. consider this you have to pay ppc to get traffic.
and if your area isn't that competitive (in terms of search engine rankings) then once you've got up the hill, you will enjoy free traffic forever!!!

and seo isn't really that hard, it just take may be one or 2 months to rank if the terms picking are less competitive.

[ktaylor310]

Have you taken a look at this site?