The SEO industry has always used “dollars for hours” as currency quite like the traditional accounting and law firms around the globe. What would happen if the currency was to change to something that is more tied to the value being delivered?

Most SEO firms are restricted by their fixed rate contracts to go all out for their clients. There is generally a limit to the resources that they can apply to the campaign of any one client. The clients do not generally want to spend a lot of resources on SEO campaigns; the SEO budgets cannot be compared with the Adwords budget, in most instances. One cannot blame them as it is much harder to isolate the impact of previous SEO activities when compared to PPC. The business case for an upcoming SEO initiative is also quite hard to prove and in most instances, the SEO initiatives remain underfunded.

How does one go about changing the opinion of people who allocate money and hold the purse strings for the marketing initiatives being taken up? These people have to change their outlook from viewing SEO as an unpredictable strategy to one that is completely accountable. And the easiest way to change the established viewpoints related to SEO activities is to advocate a pay-for-performance pricing model quite like the ones used in paid search. This is possible when there is a objective tracking system in place to measure the SEO efforts and results. The SEO industry needs “search analytics,” as opposed to “web analytics” for it to achieve its maximum potential. Only when such a system is in place, the SEO industry would be able to capitalise on the immense value that it is creating for its clients.

Many smart players have already taken the first steps on the road to accountable marketing. Some have developed a scalable and automated solution and have started pricing it on a cost-per-click basis. Such a system comes with its advantages that cannot be ignored at any costs; when the pricing model is based on the value being delivered, the vendors have all the incentives to deliver. For the clients, there is a reduction of risks as they need to pay for the actual clicks only. However, even these smart thinkers have not been able to break free of the flat fee pricing completely, with such pricing being implemented for SEO audits.

This model comes with certain problems as well. An SEO firm might not be too happy with such a performance based arrangement. The proper implementation of the recommendations at the client’s end would have an impact on its revenue.

So, when would an SEO consultant go for a performance based pricing model ? It could bet on one when there is a predictive search analytics platform in place.

Such an application would help you decide on the viability of a given SEO campaign. You can estimate the number of potential referrals, the revenue impact of these referrals, the amount of work needed, and the ROI that can be obtained from the same. You could make this estimation for all the keywords in a particular campaign list. You can even use this application to find out keywords that are not there in the original list but which might be driving traffic to the sites. This can be done without having any data on conversion rate, bounce rate, time on site as well as pages being reviewed.

Some smart thinkers are using the keyword popularity data from Google and Yahoo and “click through rates” to arrive at the number of referrals. The “predictive search analytics” platform is facilitating the process for many of these firms and helping them to see the upside potential of existing keywords as opposed to the baseline traffic. Such a platform is helping firms to calculate the client revenue from new transactions; the value of non-monetary actions such as the download of a white paper can also be quantified using such a system.

As of now, implementing a pay-for-performance in a SEO campaign could be a bit tricky. When you are estimating ROI in a particular keyword, you need to have a fair idea on the cost of optimising the same in terms of man hours. This is difficult when you are not aware of the particular page to be optimised and the steps needed to optimise the same. As a vendor, you would need to be aware of the costs of acquiring the associated revenue. You could do so by estimating the “difficulty in optimisation” for each of keyword.

There is a correlation between the “difficulty in optimisation” and paid search competitiveness and so the paid search data points can be used to approximate the optimisation difficulty. The paid search data points could be anything from the number of search queries on Google and Yahoo to the number of bidders on paid search.

The SEO can nominate the budget in terms of the hours spent in the campaign; the new applications that are being developed by some leading firms can then be used to allocate the hours across the identified keywords. The ROI can be calculated for each keyword and the SEO firms can decide on the most appropriate performance based pricing models to pitch before clients. It could be anything from search referrals, sales, and actions to website referrals.

This knowledge can then help the SEO practitioners to create a case for performance based pricing. A performance based pitch could place a firm in an advantageous position viz a viz its competitors. Businesses wanting to establish themselves as true performers cannot afford to miss this window of opportunity.

People have a tendency to connect with others at a personal level and this is as much true for a business initiative as when you are just wanting to portray a image. The idea is to build up a dynamic relationship with others as brands are quite a bit more than just logos and commercials. Brands are the way people perceive a person, a product, or a service, and are always built on trust and credibility.

A brand that is successful encourages interaction with users and the experiences go a long way in making its products and services better and more suited to the users’ needs. The relationship can be strong if it is based on trust; however, the businesses have to make themselves known before they can be trusted. One could also say the same for social networking. This concept is gaining in importance with many people shifting to online communication from face to face communication.

Search the Internet and you would be able to find many social networking sites. The best strategy for you would be to focus on the ones that go with your niche.

Create a blog:

You could set up a blog to enhance your online presence. The blogs are generally search engine friendly and there is rapid indexing of content. The easiest way to start a blog is to sign up for a free account on Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad. Once this is done, you can start blogging on any subject that interests you. People – going through your blog – can know more about you and your company and that too at a personal level.

Another concept that needs to be mentioned in this context is that of “micro blogging.” The users can send brief updates; they can set the profiles in such a manner that the blogs would be viewed by everyone or a restricted group. You can find this feature in Facebook and Linkedin as status updates and make the most of the same.

Create social networking accounts:

Another great idea is creating your profiles in social networking sites such as Linkedin. In this community for professional and business users, your credentials would be shared in a resume format. You can put up blog content on your personal profile page; and any changes that you make would be posted automatically.

And if the purpose is to connect with family and friends, the best option would be to create a Facebook account. You can display your photos and interact personally with friends, family members, and contacts.

In both Linkedin and Facebook, there is a “groups” function using which you can create sub communities of your choice. You can create a group with colleagues from work. You can also create special activity groups or hobby groups and develop bonds with other like-minded individuals. When such groups are created, there is a lot of networking that takes place, and people having similar likes and dislikes come together.

Grow social media.

You might be wondering about the specific steps to be followed while you are trying to build up a social media profile. The steps are as follows:

1. Registering your account: You would need a user name, an email address, and a password to register with a social networking site. You can keep the same user name and email across the different social media sites; this way, people who are already connected with you in a particular site would not find it problematic to access you in any other. While creating a business profile, you can use the name of your company. You can use your real name while you are creating a personal profile.

2.Key in the correct information – You can enter the right information as privacy is a priority in many of these social media sites. You can change your settings according to your needs and preferences. It is up to you whether you want to disclose certain information about you in the community.

3. Add the people you know – Once you have registered and keyed in some personal details, it is time to search for family and friends and add them to your network.

4. Search for new friends – You can make the maximum use of your newly created profile to search for new friends online. There could be someone you want to know more about; in such a scenario, you can always try and get him or her to be in your friend list. You can use one of your existing connections to get introduced to this person. You can be a part of some special groups as well, after the group administrator approves your request to join the group.

5. Participate and share – You can make the most of the status update feature to receive updates on contacts and friends. You can converse with them and add comments to their photos and other uploads. In professional communities, your comments need to reflect your experience and expertise to make the maximum impact. This way, you can leave a lasting impression and optimise your social profiles.

Budget cuts might force many marketers to stop bidding on their brand terms, but this can be the biggest mistake that they make. Undoubtedly, such a strategy would be a quick and easy way to limit the spending of resources; however, the negative impact of this step on the performance of a search engine marketing (SEO) campaign can be quite drastic. One can identify as many as seven reasons for brand owners to continue bidding on their brands and trademark terms even during recession to ensure the greatest returns from their SEO campaigns.

Control the marketing message: You can control the marketing message that the visitors see by entering the auction for your brand and trademark terms. If you are not a part of the auctioning process, the way your brand is represented in search engine results would be controlled by the resellers and affiliates. More often than not, this would not be aligned with the branding objectives that you have in mind. The dynamic quality of a paid search ad would obviously be missing in a top natural listing. On the contrary, you can engage your customer using the latest promotion or customer focused messaging in a paid search.

Go with the policy changes: Google’s trademark policy has been updated since June 15th and now the advertisers can buy trademark terms that they do not own and also use then in their ad copy, even without the explicit permission of the trademark owners. This change has made it imperative for brand owners to display ad copy on their trademark terms. The fact that you are not bidding on your trademark terms does not mean that your competitors would also follow your example. Other advertisers, and sometimes even your competition, can display relevant ad copy capturing the searcher’s attention, and stay ahead in the market dynamics.

Check out what affiliates are doing: Many a times, your affiliates would not hesitate in making a quick buck by bidding your brand name in paid search. They could go for geo-targeting on your live brand ads, or sometimes even try and out bid you. The affiliates could be bidding with your permission; and you would have to decide whether it is in your interests to allow them to own these terms in the present moment. You would also have to think about the time when you would want to join the auction process in the future.

Drive conversions the right way: Bidding on trademark terms can drive conversions for one. It would also provide you with avenues to conduct research on the marketing messages that go well with your customers. You could check out whether your target customers respond better when you appeal to their emotions, their judgment, or their spending capabilities. If promotional messaging is working wonders, does free shipping or a discount ensure the maximum number of conversions? You can set up a simple ad copy test using your brand terms. Once you have an idea on the messages that have the maximum appeal amongst customers, half the battle is won. You can then apply these messages in other online marketing channels such as email marketing, affiliate marketing, and display advertising.

Align your marketing message across channels to capture maximum traffic: PPC brand ads complement other types of marketing efforts such as display advertising. According to a recent study being conducted by iProspect on the integration of display and search advertising, around 27% of people responding to online display ads also search for the product or service featured in the advertisements. When you are not advertising on your brand terms in a paid search auction, you could miss out the benefits of display advertising.

Assess your cost advantages: You could be saving incrementally by pausing your brand terms; this might not however offset the loss of revenue – more so when the average CPC for brand terms is low. The brand with a top organic position might not always get a click and the overall site traffic including SEO revenue could be adversely affected, when you pause your brand terms.

Assess your long term objectives: If you are abandoning your auction due to budgetary constraints, you might have to pay higher CPCs in the future, when you decide to enter the auction again. Your competitors, sellers, and affiliates can take advantage of your absence and bid on your brand and trademark terms to improve their quality scores. In the future, auctioning on your brand and trademark terms could be a more expensive proposition.

The bottom line is that eliminating paid search on trademark terms could work out in the short term for most brands. On the long run though, the brands can enhance their overall campaign performance to a significant extent by advertising on these terms. Smart marketers would be bidding on them, even when the marketing budgets are tight.

Social media is gaining in popularity in recent times, with many brands, companies, and organizations making the most of this new and innovative concept. Many organizations are becoming more mature in the way they are treating social media. The initial euphoria is over and companies are done with just creating a Facebook page. As of now, companies are more into implementing the right kind of communications strategies in social media. They are using this new channel to reach out to their audiences more effectively and efficiently.

People into social media planning for organizations need to be prepared for challenges that lie ahead though. They have to get out of their traditional corporate mindsets and think more creatively. It is not just identifying the target audience and convincing them into buying some products or services. Such a conventional approach in social media would most likely back fire and antagonize every body.

One has to understand that people today are depending on the online communities and social networks to know more about products and services that they are planning to buy. They are wary of “corporate messaging” and are looking for alternative sources of information. The trusted third party information is being preferred over anything else.

A successful social media strategy should be based on certain parameters of conversation rather than a sales pitch. You would need to find your way into conversations that would be beneficial for your business interests. To develop parameters on which your conversations would be based, you would need to answer some questions. Some of these questions are listed below:

• Who are the people you would like talking to?
• What are the topics they are looking for?
• When is the appropriate time to join in the conversation ?
• What do you need to do to express your views without being too promotional?
• What are the ways to earn their trust?
• When can you turn the conversation towards your products or services?
• How can you retain the confidence of the group?

You need to find answers to these queries and this can be done only after being a part of certain communities and conversations in the social networking environment. However, it would be in your interests to think ahead so that when the time comes to answer the same, you are better prepared than your competitors. The answer to these queries are at the core of a successful social media strategy.

Mosaic, a leading web promotion service provider and an expert in the field of Internet marketing and advertising has taken a giant leap, leaving all its competitors behind, by devising a unique methodology- Dartboard Optimisation Matrix (DOM) to facilitate the Search Engine Rankings (SEO) for its clients.

DOM is used to make the targeted traffic machine more effective in getting quality traffic and its conversion into sales. DOM is known for offering reliable and consistent results. The reason is simple: this technique is based on factors like dartboard keyword research, themed canonical implementation, and topical backlinking- all of which help in increasing the popularity of a web site in search engine rankings.

In this .com era, you would find literally every SEO company making a claim to give new wings to your business. Such SEO companies lure the clients by promising them top ranking and results that are practically impossible to achieve. However, the clients have now realised that these claims just don’t work in long term. This is where Mosaic extends a helping hand. You can sample this on your own by answering a simple question. How do you find information on the net? Simple: by keying in your query in the search engine. The search engine would then display the search results that are obtained by matching the exact words of your query with the text in your web site. This means that web sites which feature the exact words that you have entered, at appropriate places, will get better rankings and consequently better sales. Thus, the punch line is: to sell well you must rank well and to rank well you must match the words used in the searcher query.

But, have you ever realised that there can be infinite permutations and combinations of a single phrase. So, the success of your business not only depends on the merits of your product, but also on the linguistic skills of the user.

Mosaic helps you make your web site visible for a wide range of many permutations and combinations of searcher query words by using the DOM methodology. Its DOM is a proprietary methodology of concentric keyword identification and implementation of themed canonicals into a web site for insightful business optimisation. In simple words, DOM helps your business fetch good rankings across search engines for hundreds of relevant keywords and search phrases.

DOM is implemented in three steps on a web site. It begins by identifying concentric keywords. DOM aims to arrive at a set of keywords which describe the nature of the client’s business correctly. It makes sure that the keywords are catchy so that they are able to attract huge traffic. Also, DOM makes sure that the keywords are such which are relatively un-optimised for. DOM’s keyword selection strategy revolves around two central steps which are: theme determination and appropriate selection of words to represent those themes. For this, DOM first analyses the theme of the web site and then generates keywords which are in sync with the theme of the site. The finalisation of the keywords for any given site is done in DOM by generating the seed (theme or primary keywords) for the site and expanding the seed keywords into key-phrases by adding qualifiers.

Mosaic generates the seed words by understanding the business domain and the business model of its clients. Around 10-12 seed keywords are generated and qualifiers are added to these seed keywords using DOM. These qualifiers can be anything: location, sub-product, colour, part, or any activity. By utilising these qualifiers, the list of the seed keywords (somewhere around 20 to 30) is expanded. Typically, a sub theme key phrase is 2-3-4 word long. This set of 25 to 30 keywords is expanded using DOM to include singular-plural word combinations and various other combinations.

The ideal set of keywords/ key phrases to come up finally under DOM is around 70-100.This list also represents possible ways of looking for a particular web site on the search engines.

The keywords once finalised are ranked by understanding their relative popularity. Appropriate places are then searched to target the keywords. DOM then creates backlinks into this site structure. For achieving this, DOM mandates a monthly format for link creation instead of guaranteed links from sites with PR 4, 5, 6, 7, and so on. This backlinking methodology gets very lucrative results. Mosaic uses its DOM database of over 4000 confirmed links to get and execute reciprocal as well one way linking missions.

DOM thus ensures a well thought of site structure with proper keywords, making sure that the site is optimally integrated into the democratic structure of the World Wide Web. Last but not the least, benefit of site optimisation using DOM is that it gets you ranked on search engines with 100s of keywords thus boosting your online brand, revenues, traffic, and profitability.

Mosaic, one of the most renowned and reputed web promotion service provider aims at offering top quality Internet marketing and advertising services to its clients. Comprising a team of dedicated and experienced professionals, Mosaic is committed to achieve the objectives of its clients by working in close co-ordination with them so as to maximise their return on investment.

Have you ever wondered why your search marketing efforts are not bearing fruit? The probabiliy of your search marketing initiatives missing as much as 80 % of your target audience is quite high.

Why?

The reasons are not difficult to depict. The natural or organic search results are responsible for about 70% to 80% of all clicks. Sponsored listings or PPC is responsible for the remaining 20% to 30%. However, despite this, the B2B marketers give more priority to their PPC campaigns.

One cannot disown the fact that most businesses today participate in both PPC and SEO; however, there are many B2B marketers that are more into stepping up their PPC initiatives than anything else. The results of PPC are evident in a short span of time, and this can be really gratifying for the businesses involved. The capmaign adjustments that are made today get reflected in the results tomorrow and so, and the SEO campaigns are ignored to some extent.

To improve the overall performance though, leveraging both PPC as well as SEO initiatives are important. The integration of these campaigns is necesary for the success of the Internet marketing campaign. The successful inrtegration of the PPC and the SEO campaigns is not easy though. There are three common integration mistakes that marketers need to be aware of. As marketers, you need to avoid these three pitfalls while bringing your PPC and SEO campaigns together.

Lack of Cross communication

One of the most common pitfalls in the integration process is the lack of communication between the two teams – one responsible for the PPC initiatives and the other for the SEO campaign. The search marketing efforts of organisations can fall off track if there is a “divide and conquer” modus operandi in place. A team of people would be responsible for SEO and a compeletely different team would be accountable for PPC. In large organisations, this could have a negative impact; inconsistent programs would be produced where different priorities are assigned to different keywords. Also, in such a scenario, all the paid and organic listings would not be receiving the same promimence. The inconsistencies in creative messaging could confuse the visitors to the site and lead to marked differences in the landing pages.

Given such a scenario, what does an Internet marketer do? I would suggest that a centralizing of the search function would be of help here. However, if there is no option for centralizing the search functionality, the best alternative would be to increase cross communication. Results can be improved to a significant extent by sharing data across campaigns.

You might see that certain terms are showing great results for your PPC campaign; you can then use this data in your SEO campaign. The terms that are underperforming in the SERPs should also not be incorporated in the PPC campaign. The smart marketers would test the creative messages on the PPC campaigns and use the information so gained to develop the Meta Data for the SEO campaigns. This way, they can entice their targetted customers to click through.

Failure to comprehend strengths

It is best to leverage the strengths of each program while you are integrating the two. You could want to make a short term promotion; in such an instance, you should be concentrating on your PPC initiatives. The speed and flexibility of such an initiative would best suit your objective. You can control the start and stop dates, select the exact messages that you want to deliver, and step up the volume for the expected end of quarter rush.

On the other hand, SEO is great for driving large volumes of traffic through content optimisation. You can optimise your core terms in SEO and ensure that you get consistent placements in the SERPs, which is necessary for driving traffic. One could also leverage SEO to get more immediate results by optimising for image and video search. You can gain traction in these areas more easily as compared to the conventional SEO methods.

Improper understanding

As marketers, you much also understand what each program delivers; a failure to do so can put your integration process off track. To avoid this pitfall, you must have a clear understanding of the specific goals of PPC as well as SEO. There should also be a proper plan in place to measure the results of each campaign individually and some sort of accountability in the internal performance at your end.

More often than not, the organisations – both large and small – do not keep a track of these elements, which in turn works against the integration of their SEO and PPC efforts.

To conclude, I can say that a successful integration of SEO and PPC campaigns is a potent combination. And you can do well to avoid the pitfalls that I have mentioned above. This way, you can integrate your search efforts, improve your overall performance, and help your organisation to reach its full potential.

The revolutionary developments in IT (Information and Technology) sector and the increasing use of the Internet has changed our lives irrevocably and for the better. More and more people today are using this medium to connect, communicate, assess information, and be in the know of things.

Most of us are glued to the Internet – in our homes as well as work areas – and are spending a considerable part of our time surfing the Internet. However, there remains some doubt as to whether we are aware of the true power of this medium.

The utility value of the Internet is being recognised at various levels and the concept of active participation over the web is being streamlined to suit myriad needs. Web 2.0 sites act as platform and enable interaction amongst the people visiting these sites. People can express their views and opinions on different topics; their experiences, anecdotes, and shared knowledge can create some very informative content for the web. The best part about the web 2.0 sites is that the content is not boring and monotonous; on the contrary the content is informal and scores high over what is there in other sites.

The web 2.0 sites play a vital role in social networking and can go a long way to eliminate cultural and regional barriers. Visitors to these sites can interact across communities and discuss the common issues that are effecting them. The subject of discussion can be as varied as the next football world cup to the latest developments on the political front in any particular region.

The best part about these web sites is that they can be used for developing businesses as well. Business owners can use the web 2.0 sites to promote their products and services and hope to accrue significant profits. At the present moment, there is a lot of awareness about these networking sites. More and more people are opening up to this idea of web 2.0 sites and using them to make the most of all their online activities and endeavours.

Sourcing good links is the toughest but the most crucial thing if you intend to get high rankings on Google. It is always a time consuming activity to get good inbound links to your website, you must ensure that inbound links to your website should contain the right keywords you are targeting.

Search engines always consider the relationship between the keywords you are targeting and the content of your web page.

Sometimes the keywords in the links are so important for search engines that site owner managed to get site to the top of search results for a very mysterious keywords.

What if your site does not contain any link?

“Even if your website does not contain any back link or if the site is new, you need not to worry. You can still try to get links from the other authority sites. You only need to be sure that the anchor texts you are planning to use for the link building should contain the keywords you planning to promote for your website.”

My Comment: This is the most important activity to you need to decide before starting the link building for your website. Please ensure perfect URL mapping and keyword selection based on the content of the web page. Do not promote tomatoes for the page which is selling potatoes J

At the same time, you need to be sure that the links to your website don’t look like Google Bomb. Always look for links to your website that use keywords that are related to your website. Most importantly always try to rotate the anchor texts for the links. “If you are looking to promote your website on 3 different keywords for e.g. Bad Credit Loan, Debt consolidation, Credit Cards, please ensure that you use these keywords randomly to make it more natural.”

My Comment: To make the link building more natural always use variety of keywords and not just the one single keyword to promote your site. If possible change the keyword and the description for the links after every 10 links secured. But please ensure that whatever you are targeting should be based on the content of your web page.

Additionally, URL mapping of the site should be perfect. That means if you are targeting the keyword ‘Bad Credit Loan’, link should point to the page that contains the valid content based on the selected keyword and should not be visa versa.

It is always better to start contacting the webmasters those are already linking back to your competitor sites. What if your website already has some links?

“If your site is old and contains some back links, please ensure that the other sites linking back to you are using the correct details based on your site content. If not, than please contact them immediately to get the link details rectified otherwise links will not be considered as genuine by the search crawlers and all your efforts spent in getting those links will be a loss.”

My Comment: It is very important for you to analyze the keywords being used by other webmasters to link to your site. Always tally the details once you get the confirmation from the webmaster that your link has been added.

Even if you are willing to increase the back links to your site, please ensure that all links must be as per the defined quality parameters.

Try to get links only from the thematic websites using the correct details of your keywords.

Links must be from the pages with lesser outbound links. If possible, get links from the pages with less than 30 outbound links.

Links must be from Unique Ip addresses.

Also try to get the Alexa Traffic Rank of the Page where you are asking the other webmaster to add your link.

Page must be crawled in past 30 days.

All the back links to your site should confirm that your website is genuinely in business and you are targeting only relevant pages in order to optimize your website to get the high Google rankings.

Bing – Mircosoft’s search engine has now become publicly available, and the onus is on you to decide whether it can take on the might of Google. Available at www.bing.com, this search engine replaces Live Search and is garnering a lot of attention. Microsoft is going all out to promote Bing; it is expected to spend an estimated $80 million to $100 million on Bing marketing. This search engine from Microsoft is expected to be a hedge against Yahoo and capture some of its market.

One thing is certain, With Bing firmly in place, Google would have to pull up its socks and keep innovating its search initiatives. There would also be some competition in the pay per click domain and Google cannot get too greedy.

Do you think Bing is different from Google? It is not dramatically different from Google; but some people have found its results to be stronger. The visible changes in Bing are listed below:

A preview of a web page is available when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of any search result.

Fewer results are displayed when this search engine understands your intent.

Many a times, the search results are divided into categories. Your search for the popular musician Justin Timberlake could get you results in categories such as songs, movies, biography, wallpaper, and downloads. You could also get images and videos while using this search engine.

You can display the Wikipedia searches inline and you would not have to leave the Bing site. All that you need to do is click the “Enhanced View” link and you are done.

You get a different background image every day. There are special hidden hot spots in these images and you can click on them to know more.

It does not take much time to load the Bing’s homepage on your web browser. There is a provision of turning off the background image as well.

You could make the most of the video search option to enjoy the videos without leaving the search engine altogether.

There are special search engines for health, shopping, and travel – and this makes the search process more easy and hassle free.

You can return to the most recent searches of the last two days using the search history feature. If you want to protect your privacy, you can turn off this feature.

Bing does not recognize misspellings and returns no results for such searches.

Have you though about putting a Google Penalty plan in place? NO!! Then it is imperative that you get cracking at one. Yes!! Good, how is it working out for you all?

Google is now shifting its algorithm almost constantly and so guessing the SERPs is not easy any longer. The strategy of penalizing sites with paid links is also another trend to watch out for. You should be prepared to deal with a Google Penalty, even if you do not want one. The fact that your site is ranking well today and making significant revenue from relevant traffic being sent by Google should not stop you from creating an alternative plan of action when situations are not so conducive. Your site could be flagged down for some form of spam that you might not even be responsible for.

It is justifiable for Google to take stern actions as there are many players taking undue advantage of the system. On the one hand, we want more relevant results; on the other hand, we do things that could be termed as ethically wrong.

We should look beyond Google and find ways to drive relevant traffic to our sites even without Google. What are the other ways of delivering traffic to our site? We can

• Participate in forums: As business owners, we can put forward our views and ideas in forums. We can answer queries with our answers reflecting our expertise in the areas we are dealing in. This in turn would create a favorable impression on people and they would want to use our products or services. This way, we can generate business without actually trying to sell our products and services.
• Write articles: Writing articles is another great idea that can drive traffic. You can show off what you know and put things in perspective for your readers.
• Seek help: When you encounter any problem on the web, the best option can be to seek help from people who are aware of the technicalities involved. You can exchange notes and build up a rapport with the people who are helping you. Who knows, you could even use this new found relationship to get more links!!
• Speak out your mind – It is no use pretending to be someone that you are not. You could do well to speak out your mind in blogs, forums, e-mails, and articles.
• Make the most of your clients – Your clients are the ones who know most about you. You can get referrals from them and secure more business for yourself. Word of mouth promotion is a great way to increase your business.

The fact of the matter is that while Google is here to stay and is ultimate for delivering traffic to sites, the power of human relationships cannot be ignored altogether. The way you treat people would come back to you. Be good to them and they would be good for your businesses.