Diversity is the Name of the Game

[HTMLBasicTutor]

I have said this for a long time: Don't just worry about Google when optimizing your site. Big guys come and go.

This was validated today on the Bing blog today:

You cannot control when a search engine makes an update, or what that update will impact. That much is obvious. But what many websites fail to take action on is forecasting change, preventative work and exercises in the obvious.

Duane Forrester goes on to say:

So, when your single biggest source of traffic sudden loses steam, what do you do? If your plan was to make sure your content ranked well across all the major engines, then your plan of action would already be in effect, protecting you from the loss in one area. True, its not an offset that matches what could potentially be lost at the same level, but the option is losing everything and having nothing suddenly.

And while you're thinking of diversification as a way to protect your website from future changes, ask yourself this: is search, all up, my primary traffic source? What other sources of traffic should you be cultivating? Social traffic, direct traffic, affiliate driven traffic? Search will, for the foreseeable future, continue to be the major driver of traffic to most websites, but this doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking to other avenues as a way to augment your traffic from search...and potentially protect yourself should a future change upset the balance of rankings in some way....

...Seriously folks, if you want to lay a smack down on the animal kingdom that’s taken over your life, you can do it. Get the basics covered, leverage your unique strengths (or create new ones) and focus, like a laser, on the single thing that matters most: your visitors. Get religion on this point and never let go. The engines are very focused on those visitors: what they like, what they dislike, what they click on and what they avoid. We're watching them closely so we can learn what they want and bring exactly that to them every time. You should be, too...

(coloured highlighting by yours truly)

Quoted from: Bing Penguins & Pandas Poetry - Webmaster Center blog

Yes Duane is trying to capitalize on the dust left by the Penguin and Panda updates but if y'all had a diversified portfolio for you site and had optimized your site for all the search engines he wouldn't have been able to take this opportunity to place a little dig.

[nathan.joshua]

I think too many people rely on the big G. I used to, but I became so hypnotised by SERPs I wasn't focusing on what my visitors wanted. It's like moving Adsense ads around on your website to get a higher CTR, when you should be focusing on visitors.

Now my strategy is 50% search traffic, 50% referrals. It is hard to get the 50/50 ratio, but if you put your eggs in a lot of 'diverse' baskets they will add up.

This strategy ensures that you're not relying on 1 company for all your profits.

[ishuvonet]

I agree.Diversity is all we need now and we just cant depend on a single traffic source,specially on Google serps.Diversity can include sources like social media and related forum posting too to get continuous traffic.

[searchbliss]

It's always a good idea to have traffic sources other than G, but the fact is, when the traffic from G disappears, it still leaves a big hole.

[Joomla_Web_Developer]

I'm so sick of Google, just impossible to keep up. I'm not going to play the run around game anymore and am diversifying my projects OFFLINE!

[akasheg]

Ya agree to that. But actually since in the past decade how search engines have evolved and have been driving traffic to websites people have become obsessed with them. All everyone can see is the traffic they get from search engines. So depending on only one type of traffic always keeps you in danger of having nothing if that source is gone.

That is why the most successful business spend so much time, energy and money on other things like social media, offline advertising, online advertising, promotions etc.