Originally Posted by Ann Smarty
There's one argument that's bugging me in Google penalties dilemma.
A small business can easily go bankrupt after Google takes away their traffic and the newer-emerged pesky argument from some beloved experts in our industry is "Blame yourself: If you relied on Google only for traffic, you were doing it wrong in the first place. Google is not the Internet blah blah blah.."
Now, I understand and even advocate "Don't rely on any one source of traffic / leads" strategy. But let's face it: when Google traffic comes, it somehow monopolizes your traffic sources: I know many business owners who actually started growing their teams when Google traffic started increasing. It's easy to become dependent on it and, let's face it, it's among the best converting sources as well.
Now, how much do you depend on Google traffic and are you trying to get independent?
That's a really good question Ann. I am one of the ones who say "if you rely 100% on a Google rank to maintain your business you will someday be sorry". You make a great point though; if the business is coming in through Google you can either expand to meet the demand or turn away the work because you don't want to become reliant on Google. Seriously, who is going to turn away the work? Few will, but if you lose the rank what are you going to do with a larger office space and the people hired to meet the demand?