Search this Blog

The Care and Feeding of the 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room Named Google


Courtesy of www.fanpop.com
By Carl Weiss

When I was a young boy I saw the movie "King Kong." It was just an amazing movie for me. Kong was gigantic, he could do what ever he wanted on his island. He was the undisputed ruler of his world. Like King Kong, we now have a new undisputed ruler of the internet world. Our new gorilla is often gracious in what it provides and yet can be ruthless when obtaining what it wants. So who is the new King Kong? It's google of course. Here are some fact worth noting.

Google is the King Kong of search engines. It controls right around 80% of all Internet searches.   According to ComScore, 1n 2011, consumers made 4,717,000,000 searches per day on Google.  That accounted for more than 65% of all searches made worldwide.  In comparison, the number two search engine, Yahoo, only accounted for 16% of the search market in 2011. Since then, Google has gobbled up even more of the search engine market and it’s getting stronger all the time.  Aside from being one of the most profitable companies on the planet (their Q3 earnings in 2012 were in excess of $14 billion), they also own a number of other wildly popular sites. This includes such as Gmail, YouTube, Google+, Blogger, Play, Picasa, Maps, Local and many others. When it comes to succeeding online, you need to make friends with this largest of all online primates. 

800 Lb. Gorilla
800 Lb. Gorilla (Photo credit: Chris_Lott)
Like the comedian says, “What do you feed an 800-pound gorilla?  Anything it wants.”

In case you haven’t noticed, Google is one picky eater.  He wants what he wants and how he wants it.  And what he mostly wants is to be fed his own brands.  Therefore, when you think video, think YouTube.  When you think blogs, think Blogger.  When you think social network, think Google+.  If you want the gorilla to like you, then you have to feed him what he likes to eat on a regular basis. 

The Names Remain the Same, but the Game has Changed and Google Makes the Rules


When Google started back in 1998, there were a number of viable search engines that offered the opportunity to create page 1 placement in as little as 24 hours.  Back then, everything you needed to generate page 1 placement was right on your homepage.  In 98 there were no blogs, no social networks and no YouTube.  Bandwidth was so tight that it could take several minutes for a website to load if it sported a lot of graphics.  So all the search engine spiders had to use to make their ranking decision was contained on-site. 

Jump ahead fifteen years and while many of the names remain the same, the whole game had radically changed.  Nowadays one-page SEO only accounts for 25% of the ranking criteria 
google search results
google search results (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)
used by search engines.  The other 75% is made up of backlinks, blog posts, social posts, videos, podcasts, etc.  In other words, content is king in today’s World Wide Web.

Here’s where many people fall off the wagon.  You see, it isn’t enough just to have blogs, videos and social networks connected to your website.  If you want to succeed at search engine marketing, you need to create content on a regular and continuous basis.  With blogs you need to post at least once per week.  When it comes to social networks, you need to feed the need on a daily basis.  As for videos, the more the merrier. 

If You're Going to Play the Internet Marketing Game, Play to Win

There are only 12 to 14 positions on page one for any search term. If you not on page one, your not in the game. When it comes to working the web to win, there are winners and there are losers.  Just as in the casinos, the players with the most chips tend to dominate the game.  In the case of the Internet, this means that big businesses can muscle their way to the top of most searches.  That’s because they can afford to hire armies of bloggers, and social networkers, and video producers galore to create content, content and more content. 

Most small businesses on the other hand find it hard to come up with enough chips (meaning content) to even get into the game.   Does that mean that small business owners should throw in the towel?  Hardly.  Small business need to work smarter not harder. It mean you need to find a way to level the playing field or at least tip part of the equation in the your direction so that you can walk away with more chips than you started with.

The Principle of "Together We Stand,  Divided We Fall" Works Here, Too!

The same principles that built our nation can be used to build your web presence.  What I am talking about is people power and guerilla marketing.  Use people power to create an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality and use guerilla tactics to hit the big guys where they ain’t.

Having trouble writing a weekly blog?  Either outsource the task or get a blog buddy.  What’s a blog buddy?  That’s someone who will read and more importantly comment upon your
blogging efforts week in and week out.  (It’s what used to be called an editor.)  When writing a weekly blog it sometimes gets hard to see the forest for the trees.  A blog buddy can let you know if you are going off the rail, or are chasing the wrong story.  They can help you clean up your copy and can even suggest new blog topics.  The catch is that in order to avail yourself of these services you need to either pay for or trade out these services.  (My CFO is my blog buddy.)

Writ large you can use these same guerilla tactics to create a peer group that not only produces, but reads, comments upon and reposts each other’s blogs to the social nets.  This is the concept we used to create Club W Cubed, the Internet blogging, social networking and search engine marketing club.  We recognized the high value that Google placed on blogs, reviews, recommendations and reposts and created a mechanism that allows members to efficiently provide these services to one another.

Google Loves Mixed Media


Another thing that Google loves is called mixed media.  This consists of visual elements such as photos and videos.  A properly optimized video can jump from YouTube to Google page 1 way faster than a properly optimized website.  Plus a video is five times as likely to gener
Spezify: See-ming Lee / 2009-11-30 / SML Scree...
Spezify: See-ming Lee / 2009-11-30 / SML Screenshots (Photo credit: See-ming Lee 李思明 SML)
ate a click as is a website.  Video content doesn’t need to be lengthy or flashy.  A sixty second video that is entertaining and /or informative is all that it takes to get into the game.  You can either hire the job out or you can shoot your own videos using your laptop, tablet or smartphone. (Please invest in a tripod if you plan on using your cellphone, since there is nothing more annoying to a viewer than Shaky-Cam.)

Even better is the fact that YouTube now includes a complete editing suite on the site that anyone can use to spruce up their efforts.  Everything from image stabilization to royalty free music tracks are there for the taking.  So there’s no need to spend a bundle to let out your inner Steven Spielberg. 

How To Set The Table and Win


When it comes to putting on the feedbag for the 800 lb gorilla, it doesn’t take bushels baskets of cash to bring home the bacon.  All it takes is patience, persistence and a bunch of bananas to get you into the game and on Google’s good side. What do we mean by a bunch of bananas? Lots of content and comments being posted to your blog, social nets, and various legitimate back links to your website. This content must useful and it must be consistently posted on a frequent and regular basis. By the end of a year’s time, you will have a massive amount of content and connections leading back to your domain. We call this marketing method Content Marketing or Search Engine Marketing. Make sure your bananas have the name Google on them whenever possible, (bananas like Google+, YouTube, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Local etc.). If you do, the 800-pound gorilla we call Google will reward you with higher ranking.  


If you like this article, you can find more by typing “Google” in the search box at the top left of this blog. If you found this article useful, share it with your friends, families and co-works. If you have a comment related to this article, leave it in the comment sections below.  If you would like a free copy of our book, "Internet Marketing Tips for the 21st Century", fill out the form below. 

Thanks for sharing your time with me



Since 1995, Carl Weiss has been helping clients succeed online.  He owns and operates several online marketing businesses, including Working the Web to Win and Jacksonville Video Production. He also co-hosts the weekly radio show, "Working the Web to Win," every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.com.



Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments:

Post a Comment