Everything is fine one day, the next, the world is turned upside down.

There are a couple of points to be made about this update. The first, it proves that if you’re running a business you better have other forms of traffic generation in place.

The big problem with online business is there is no walking traffic. In the offline world this update would be equivalent to moving your store front from where you currently are, prime time real estate, to the boondocks where very few people live, work and shop.

People work hard to get the virtual real estate in the top spots. The thing about it, Google is a for-profit-company and they can pretty much do what they want. And because everything is virtual, it makes it too easy to do.

An example of this was when CDKitchen, out of Austin, Texas was effected by the latest update…

Google can give websites a lot of traffic. It also can take it away.

That’s what Valerie Whitmore found out recently.

Whitmore runs CDKitchen out of her Austin, Texas, home with husband Brent. She started the website as a hobby in 1995 and named it after her 100-pound Dalmatian, Chili Dog. With Google’s help, the mom-and-pop shop grew into one of the most popular cooking sites on the Web.

But traffic to CDKitchen, which features free recipes and cooking columns, plunged 39 percent on Feb. 24, knocking it "into the abyss," Whitmore said. That’s when Google, which delivers 70 percent of the site’s traffic, made a major change to how search results are ranked.

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014547479_btgoogleformula21.html

It’s updates like this that make you cringe in horror and make you wonder what you’re going to do next. If you are running an online business you need to begin thinking about how you can be nimble, change with the times and continue to get traffic in some way.

If you’re wondering what Google wants you can listen to Matt Cutts and others who interpret what he has to say…

"Our primary goal is to make sure we return the best websites we can," said Matt Cutts, who leads Google’s spam-fighting efforts. "No algorithm can be 100 percent accurate."

Google engineers are constantly tweaking the search engine, making hundreds of changes a year to the algorithm, most of them less noticeable. They keep the algorithm under wraps to prevent Web developers from getting around each revision Google makes.

As part of its effort to zero in on troublemakers, Google created a software extension to its Chrome browser that lets users block sites. More than 100,000 users have installed the extension, giving Google the ability to study the top several dozen sites that users disliked so much they gave them the boot. About 84 percent of those sites were affected when Google tweaked its algorithm, Cutts said.

"The work of search is never done. No matter what we improve, there will be people trying to ‘game’ search," he said.

Source:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014547479_btgoogleformula21.html

This is all very interesting.

You see, the comment Matt makes “The work of search is never done. No matter what we improve, there will be people trying to ‘game’ search” is something that makes me go hmmm.

Let’s think about this. “Google” can change the algorithm all the time. They are gaming their own search system. They do what you want and no body stops them.

It’s our job to know or figure out what they want and give it to them. It’s no different than a crappy merchant getting the best storefront property in town. It happens and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. They gamed the system.

Let’s face it… everyone who owns a blog or website is interested in gaming the system to garner more traffic. It is what it is.

As long as you have people searching for stuff you’re going to have people trying to sell those people stuff. That’s what it boils down to.

So what does all this mean?

It means if you’re wanting to make money online with a blog, a website, an ecommerce store or any other type of virtual property, then you need to be prepared to change on a whim.

You should begin thinking about how you can set your site up so that it conforms to Google’s current policies and you should always consider other methods of traffic generation.

Have you thought about going offline?

Enjoy and prosper -

Jay

PS- Be sure to sign up for my newsletter if you want to stay up to date on traffic generation strategies and different approaches to making money online.

Here’s the deal. I just ran across an article at Wired Magazine and it’s all about Larry Page taking over as CEO at Google. It’s a pretty long read but an entertaining read. Don’t worry, I’m going to summarize my opinion of this story for you as it relates to Google, search, and making money online.

First of all, Larry is made out to be one creative fellow. He’s got some quirks about him that would make many “stick in the a$$” types cringe. But that creativity is what has made Google the behemoth it is.

Before Larry took over CEO Eric Schmidt had the helm and was navigating this beast in an ocean of sea monsters and unseen land masses. He was able to take a company from $100 Million to $30 Billion during his tenure. Now that he has been replaced, what does that mean.

Before I get to my opinion here is a short excerpt…

A few ingredients in Larry Page’s stew of traits stand out unmistakably. He is brainy, he is confident, he is parsimonious with social interaction. But the dominant flavor in the dish is his boundless ambition, both to excel individually and to improve the conditions of the planet at large. He sees the historic technology boom as a chance to realize such ambitions and sees those who fail to do so as shamelessly squandering the opportunity. To Page, the only true failure is not attempting the audacious. “Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely,” he says. “That’s the thing that people don’t get.”

Original Content:  http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1

In my opinion, you can expect massive change over the coming years with Google. If Larry has the right people supporting him and the guidance of a mentor then he will do fine and Google will continue to dominate.

But if things get crazy, Google could be in for a big fall. This could be an opportunity for other search engines to rise up and begin a massive take over. No one knows where Larry is going to take the company. And that ultimately could effect search as we know it.

One thing is for sure. Larry likes speed. He likes speed to implement and speed to load. So it makes sense that keep a minimalistic and ease of use approach you do will benefit your website in the eyes of Google. Is that the end-all-be-all?  Of course not but it is a massive consideration when you see the nuances Larry has about speed.

One complaint of the current, supersized version of Google Inc. is that bureaucracy slows down progress. Expect that to change, because speed is one of Page’s primary obsessions. “He’s always measuring everything,” early Googler Megan Smith says. She was once walking with Page down a street in Morocco when he suddenly dragged her into an Internet cafè9. Immediately, he began timing how long it took web pages to load into a browser there.

Original Content:  http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1

When you read things like this you begin to understand what Google, a.k.a. Larry Page, is looking for in his company and what he wants to see in your website. Yes, it is reading between the lines but it gets to core of what the founders wanted to see.

Another area that you have to consider is what the founders see themselves and their company as. They do see Google as the one company that can collect, categorize, and deliver query on data. They want to make that data available to as many people as possible. You can see that in the digitalization of books and the project that got them into hot water with publishers.

But there is one thing that comes out and screams at you when you read between the lines. Google wants to dominate and control the way THEY see fit. They ARE the gods of internet collection and search.

You get can gleam that from this short description…

In 2008, Google participated in an FCC auction for radio spectrum to be used for mobile broadband. By the terms of the auction, if the spectrum was sold above a certain price, the winner would have to allow other companies to run devices on their networks—something Google strongly favored but that telecom companies dearly hoped to avoid. Google executives worried that the telecoms would conspire to keep bidding below that baseline price. So the company got involved in a high-stakes game of chicken. Google would bid on the spectrum, high enough to get it over the threshold, and then bow out. It left Google potentially vulnerable; if nobody else topped its bid, the company would be stuck with a multibillion-dollar piece of spectrum that it was unequipped to exploit. “Google definitely wanted to lose,” the company’s chief economist, Hal Varian, says. To Google’s great relief, Verizon did top its bid, and the company was off the hook.

Original Content:  http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1

So, what does all this mean to you?

It means you need to change with the Google. You need to be just as nimble if not more so. It also means you should look at other ways to get traffic to your website.

You never know when things might change. They could change for you favor. They could change for your negative. But what is certain… if you have other sources of online traffic then you shouldn’t have to worry about the big G as much as most people.

Think about that. Are you getting the majority of your web traffic from just once source. I’d be willing to bet that most people are. That should be a consideration for your marketing and your lead generation strategies both online and offline.

Now, go get some web traffic and start making some cash online.

Jay

You’ve got a great company and you give the best level of customer service. However as the old cliché says: “A contented client tells an admirer, an unhappy customer tells 10 friends.”  You don’t have to fret regarding the sad client telling ten friends
because you mostly do a great job and keep your customers happy. But how do you increase the quantity of friends that your happy customers are sending your way?

Plain and straightforward: You’re going to have to reward them.

The explanation that happy customers don’t tell many other people about your service is because most customers EXPECT good client service therefore the businesses that give it aren’t at the front of their mind. They have too many alternative things to stress about on a daily basis.

By starting a Client Referral Program you’ll give your best customers a reason to want to tell other individuals concerning you. Providing discounts or special incentives to customers who refer another person or company to your business is a win-win situation.

You will have medical licensing boards or other ethics committees for your profession that prohibit you from bound sorts of rewards and rightly therefore because of conflicts of interest that will arise.  However you can invariably notice one thing that you’ll be able to do to reward your customers after they refer someone to you.

Here is an example of a Client Referral Program for a Direct Mail Company and the way it works:

“When you refer somebody, which person places an order, you’ll receive a $25 credit which will be used toward any of said company’s services.

Every time this happens you will receive the $25 credit and there is no limit, thus be at liberty to go crazy referring your friends to us. If you refer enough people who become customers you could finish up getting your next order FREE.”

When you founded your own referral program you’ll need to do two things:

Initial, make certain that the motivation you offer to your customers is in proportion to the worth of what you are selling. If your least expensive service is $5000, then a $25 discount is probably not visiting be enough to urge them curious about spreading the word.

And secondly, you need to market it. Make certain that your customers understand
about the new reward program by:

one)  Having your sales associates mention it whenever someone places an order.

2)  Posting notices in your business if you have got client foot traffic.

and

three)  Sending out announcements to your customer address list on a regular basis.

All of this stuff can facilitate your to extend the amount of consumers that you receive through word of mouth, and at the identical time help keep down your marketing costs. Is that this a great plan or what?

Providing discounts or special incentives to customers who refer another person or company to your business is a win-win situation.

Reward the customers that reward you.  One amongst the best compliments is when someone refers another or others to your business.

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For a start, you need to of course have a good and professional looking website.If you have a lousy and clutter website, you can be sure that most of the visitor will hit the Back button when they hit your website.  Do not waste the traffic.  Put in effort to have a professional looking site.You can anytime choose to go for professional to help you.It is not tough to make your website look professional.There are many website tools that allow you to do just that. Some are even free.

Web traffic generation is another important factor that one need to put attention to.  You can have a great looking website, but without traffic, it is useless.  The easiest and also the most cost effective way to generate traffic is through article marketing.Article marketing is when you write great original article and submit it to directories or websites which may choose to publish your article.You can include your signature at the end of the article which will have a link to your site.The readers who read the articles might click on your signature in the article and visit your website.Such traffic are very targeted and thus high conversion rate.

There are more web traffic generation methods that you can use.But using article marketing method is perhaps the most cost efficient way to do this.  The other methods are based on the now popular social media platorm.  In general, you create accounts in these social platform such as Twitter or Facebook and harness a group of like mindedness community and then create a buzz on certain topic.  And you can point them to your website when the time is ripe.  More about good money making ideas.