SEO 2.0

While I enjoyed my short vacation on Easter I couldn’t resist to think about SEO 2.0 with all its major parts Web 2.0, social media and blogging. I want to share with you a saying that kept popping up on my mind:

Do not put all your eggs into one basket.

This is an idiom that is used very often on the Net in the realm of SEO or marketing at large. Why? All of them may break at the same time. It can be applied on many different levels:

a) Social media participation
Users who have been banned on Digg for no reason after participating for years can tell you a whole lot about that. Do not contribute solely to one social site because you can lose all your authority any day. A site can even go bankrupt. It can break down, ban you or become otherwise useless. Thus I am actively participating at 3 sites and from time to time at 3 more.

In short it means:

Do not put all your time and effort into just one social medium or UGC site.

Rather use the triangle strategy by combining 3 to 5 social media.


b) Traffic sources
While in Germany most webmasters and worse business owners are often highly dependent on Google traffic in the blogosphere by now lots of people rely on StumbleUpon as the main source of traffic. I quickly found out how this might backfire and from then on concentrated on providing value for regular visitors or those who subscribed to SEO 2.0. If they already know something I won’t write another post about it just to suit the lowest common denominator of StumbleUpon. My posts get nevertheless submitted to SU each and every time but on many days the direct visitors outnumber the casual stumblers. SEO 2.0 has at least 3 to 5 major traffic sources:

1. Core audience coming via type in traffic, Google Reader, Netvibes, Bloglines and the likes
2. Community and niche sites I contribute to like Sphinn, CSS Globe or Mixx.
3. Also I get more and more traffic via blogs and sites that link to me, where I guest posted or even commented. Thus the success of others is also my success.
4. StumbleUpon, where I get submitted by my readers, I rarely review myself (only if I think I have been misrepresented)
5. Oh, yes, Google long tail search queries but I don’t care for these enough.
   

In short it means:

Do not rely on one major traffic source, be it Google search or StumbleUpon.

Diversify your traffic sources and concentrate on a core audience of fans, subscribers and returning visitors.


c) Revenue or income streams
I already mentioned this very important aspect of freelancing or doing business. You need to have several income sources. If you are just working for one client you can end up broke very quickly. I had to learn this the hard way. Also being dependent on client work itself is a mistake. You need to find ways to earn money while you are asleep via selling products, ads or affiliations. If you get sick and you can’t work for clients… The same applies to small businesses and companies. They don’t get sick but they might lose their clients. If the have no profitable side projects that yieldsubstantial revenue they will fail.

In short it means:

Do not depend on one client or client work at all.

Diversify your income. Try to establish your won scalable projects which will run on autopilot if necessary.


All in all, do not let any medium monopolize you. SEO 2.0 is about using Web 2.0, social media and blogging without being enslaved by them. It’s the declaration of independece online.