I stumbled across this article this morning and found it an interesting read. When I first got into internet marketing I was purely doing the organic search game & the highs were high and the lows were terrible. In time, I added paid search, pr, lead gen and some other tactics to the arsenal in an attempt to even out the ups and downs. If you are still relying on one trick / skill to obtain the majority of your traffic you will want to read this article - it’s nothing new - but a good reminder to all of us:
Sanar says he sold $3 million dollars worth of jewelry a year. Then, he says, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) turned its back on Skyfacet.com, condemning the site to Internet obscurity.
Beginning in September 2006, Skyfacet no longer showed up on the first few pages of Google’s results when users typed in search terms like “diamonds” and “engagement ring.” The site’s traffic vanished, and Sanar says his sales dropped $500,000 in three months.
on May 7th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Ryan this is so true and a problem I hear from my clients constantly. Google doesn’t ‘owe’ you rankings, and relying on their free services is not a good long term business strategy. Neither is hiring an SEO who is unreliable.