Search engine traffic, long-term users and startups.

How many startups rely on organic search engine traffic for the early push? The truth is, very few, if any.

Organic Search engine traffic does not come in quick, while new startups need to make many things happen as quickly as they can.

Majority of startups rely heavily on buzz from press releases, pitching industry bloggers and some social media promotion for the quick take-off traffic. These methods are good for getting quick traffic (they also cost money/time), but I don't believe they offer the best kind of traffic a startup should get.

Some people, especially startup founders may see the idea behind this post as a bit off the line. I am open and ready to hear your views on it right here on this blog. The new/normal belief or advice you get these days is about how/why you shouldn't worry about the search engines and that you can create a buzz or may be even success withous worrying about SEs.

PR can surely take a startup a long way, but that is as far as the startup gets. Beyond the buzz, a few percentage of the actual users the buzz attracted will still be using the startup's product.

With organic search traffic, users, the press and bloggers get to validate the idea and the product for you. The users didn't just discover you in an email or press release, they searched for what you are offering and found you, so as long as your service is good, they won't abandon you that easily. If any bloggers or press write about you without you actually pitching them or paying them (that is they found out about you through the SEs), means you have a great product and you are a great startup.

Traffic from organic search is free. Any buzz that this creates for you would be based on the actual value of your service, so with that in mind you can invest more in your idea (knowing it has value and potential for success).

PR is a great tool, however add organic SEO to your arsenal and may be try it first before spending money and time on PR.

Change with the search!

If you have been following any web marketing firm's website or any search marketer's blog lately, you would have by now come across Google's change (or overhaul) of it's search technology.

It's time for SEO to change too. Shortly, Web companies like ours that rely mostly on organic search traffic will have to change their ways of thinking. New tests will have to be run, new analysis and more.

My company is doing well on search engines and most especially on Google, we've beaten most of the big guys to get to where we are and we get atimes more than 1500 monthly visitors from Google alone. Upto now, we haven't spent a dime on marketing, or atleast promotion.

In preparation, I went to the Google caffeine sandbox page (not sure if that's what it is called) to test the new search technology, to see if I can notice any changes to search results. I was too late to arrive because from the message I found on the page, Google is done testing it, they think it will work and have taken it off the developer test page.

My guess is, the technology may have some LSI built into it, atleast more than what we have already seen (or atleast think we have).

If any of you has used Google caffeine in test, we would love to have your thoughts here. Just comment on this post.