Promoting Your Blog Without Search Engines

This is a guest post by Vishal Sanjay of  DumbLittleBlogger.

I guess all of you were there at the time when the internet had no search engines, I was also there at that time, but too small to use the web. I still remember my mother having a list of excel sheets which were filled with web pages filed under particular categories, she would get those sheets from her friends and give it to some other of her friends.

One sheet would have up to 200 web pages and within a year a good quality directory would make it to 1000’s of netizens and the 200 web pages there would get some good targeted traffic for free. Well, that was back then when no one ever thought of a search engine, today search engines have revolutionized the web and we cant imagine a day with Google or Yahoo.

That is for a normal netizen, but what about we bloggers? I guess almost 35-45% of your traffic comes from Google and if some day Google just goes down or something happens to it’s algorithms, it could mean huge loses to all bloggers and internet marketers. Search engines are a great source of traffic and revenue, but today due to the intense competition, penetrating through its barriers could take months and sometimes even years.

None of my sites ever rank well on search engines, I never block search engines but I never optimize sites for it, but still my site gets good targeted traffic and also generates some sales. I never optimize my sites for search engines, I optimize it for users.

In the past few years search engine rankings have become the biggest assets for bloggers, but let me make it clear that users are your biggest assets, currently there are about 3 billion netizens, 120 million blogs (active blogs) and 200 well running search engines, so this makes it clear that your users are your assets. So, I would advise you to design your blog for your users and create user friendly content.
Without search engines people usually do the traditional and the best working way, that is ‘the word of mouth‘. Great sites like Facebook, Youtube started of with the word of mouth. First from their creators and then from their users and don’t forget there were hardly any search engines when Google started off.

There are many sites and social communities which can generate huge amount of traffic. These sites can generate such high traffic due to low competition. I would say go to places where large number of people gather, not large amount of bloggers. Always note one thing that if something is famous before you get there, then you don’t stand a chance. Recently, I heard about the high traffic potential of StumbleUpon, I tried it and things were great, but my traffic slowly declined as StumbleUpon popularity rose. Similarly, Twitter also have a great traffic potential, but it died out before I started to use due to it’s superb success, but I did succeed in gaining some followers, which many are struggling to do these days using proper ways.

The users from these sites see a lot more than your title, keywords, meta-description, link popularity and page rank. They see you, your contributions and your history. They spread your content to a new group of users and thus, increasing your reader base.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve already got a great source of search traffic, all I wanted to tell you is to create as many alternative sources of traffic as possible.

Just promote your blog thinking that search engines never existed.

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37 thoughts on “Promoting Your Blog Without Search Engines”

  2. Intelligent post, success of a blog with search engine will quite be tough, however offline promote can still be done, with social sites and getting the words of the blog out through getting more links and providing unique content can always play a role.
    Without the search engine the search for sites that contain the terms being searched for would almost be impossible to locate in a world of millions of websites.
    .-= Biodun @ Webmaster Forum UK´s last blog ..Bing Goes Real Time with Twitter =-.

  5. Hey Sushant, thanks a lot for accepting my guest post, posting on your blog has given me good exposure. I am looking forward to continue posting on your blog. Any how thanks once again.

    Regards,
    Vishal Sanjay

  6. I cannot agree more. Look at Leo Babuta from Zen Habits. He never ever did anything for SEO and his articles still top the Search Engines coz he writes for his readers, who link him freely from their sites, facebook, twitter etc. coz they love what he has written. And Search Engines love what people love. 🙂
    .-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Bringing Meditation Online =-.

  9. Nice post Vishal. In my opinion though, as long as web users trust big time on search engines – be it Google or the next big thing – the main traffic driver will be SEs only. I would say ideally 50-70% traffic has to be organic in nature for any blog/website to be successful. Rest is from book marking, RSS feeds, directories, social networks, email newsletters, word of mouth, printed ads etc.

    If you are already an established blogger with thousands of people visiting you regularly, chances are you can survive without search engines. However, the current model gives a lot of stress to SEs and we have to live with that while preparing for a world with Google 😉
    .-= Ajith Edassery´s last blog ..Make Money from Referrals: How to sell more? =-.

      1. very informative post vishal… i liked your point “I never optimize my sites for search engines, I optimize it for users.” readers are the main part in blogging we should have a good content and responsible reply to the commentators. This makes them to visit the site regularly
        .-= Deepika´s last blog ..Tips To Become A Unique Blogger =-.

  10. This is really a nice post that promotion of the blog with out search engines. There are lot of ways where you can get the good traffic for your blog. Your post was very informative.

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