Regarding the view that SEO is not equal to online promotion, I have occasionally mentioned it in some of my blog posts, but I have never discussed this topic separately. I am writing this article today because of my feelings after seeing a post on Twitter 28. The reason was that a member posted on 28 Twitter and asked, "In online promotion, SEO is the only promotion method. Do you agree?" I read the replies in the post. Unexpectedly, many members agree that SEO is the only promotion method for online promotion. It surprised me so much that I had the urge to write this article.
3 major entrances for Internet users
First, let’s take a look at the three major entrances for Internet users. In the past, domestic Internet users mainly had two major entrances, namely search engines and website navigation. Today, with the application of web 2.0, users' habits of searching for information on the Internet have begun to change, so the third major entrance "new media" has emerged.
new media marketing
The so-called new media includes the most popular ones now, Weibo, SNS, blogs, and forums. There is a very popular term in the industry now called new media marketing. The so-called new media marketing is the promotion of Weibo, SNS, blogs, forums and other channels. Nowadays, many large Internet companies in China have dedicated teams or people responsible for new media marketing as a promotion channel.
Regarding new media promotion, I have two ready-made cases, my go9go link platform and the 28 push forum. Many friends asked me how I promoted these two websites. In fact, it is through new media marketing, and new media marketing has basically nothing to do with SEO. Take the 28tweet forum as an example. Among the webmasters who are active on it, few know about 28tweet through search engines, right? Most of them know about 28tweet through my blog posts, Weibo, or some industry forums.
In addition, website navigation is also a very important promotion channel and traffic entrance, but the threshold is relatively high. It is basically difficult for ordinary small websites to obtain traffic from website navigation. Of course, if you are willing to spend money, you can do it, but the promotion cost is high. . The threshold for SEO and new media marketing is relatively low. As long as ordinary small websites are willing to work hard, they will have the opportunity to promote their websites through these channels. If you are proficient in SEO and new media promotion methods, you can get high returns at very low costs.
Because search engines, website navigation, and new media are now the largest traffic portals. Generally, websites with some strength and capital will not let go of these three channels. But it doesn’t mean that the three channels are the only ones. In fact, there are more promotion methods. Especially small websites should look at promotion methods other than SEO, so as to make the website more competitive.
Sharing my non-SEO promotion experience
I don’t want to talk about theory here, I will talk about cases. I will simply tell you how much of my six years of online promotion work experience is related to SEO, and how many promotion methods I have done that have nothing to do with SEO.
When I first came into contact with the Internet in 2005, I only knew one promotion method: forum promotion. Because the threshold for forum promotion is low, it is suitable for newcomers to learn. Although I only had this kind of promotion method at the time, the company website could still bring about 20,000 IPs every day (PS: In 2005, when Super Girl was at its hottest, with appropriate methods, you could get such high traffic just through Baidu Tieba, so Don’t think it’s impossible. I don’t want to be regarded as a god by some people and say that I am bragging and have accomplished something that they think is impossible.)
I came to Beijing to work in 2006, and my first company was Qihoo 360. I have been doing affiliate promotion for half a year, but this costs money. Let the small webmaster provide traffic to Qihoo.com, and then distribute the money to the webmaster. In addition, I did a traffic exchange promotion for a year, which was to exchange advertising spaces with some websites to bring traffic to each other. At the highest level, you can get more than 100 WIP for free through this method. But the premise is that the website itself has a certain traffic base to achieve this promotion method and such a high promotion effect.
When I arrived at Kuxun.com in 2008, I was initially asked to do traffic swaps, but I felt that Kuxun.com did not have the basis for traffic swap promotion. So I took the initiative to promote the website navigation station for a month, allowing the website navigation to include some channels of Kuxun for free. The latest effect was to get 1 WIP for free from the navigation station every day. Then I did SEO for 4 months. This was also the first and only time I did SEO to promote the company's website at work. At that time, after passing SEO, about 30,000 new IPs were added from search engines every day, which was very cost-effective. I also did media promotion for one month in Kuxun. I submitted Kuxun’s soft articles to be included in many Baidu news seeds, and then promoted the brand of Kuxun.com, which was also a free promotion method.
From 2009 to 2011, I worked at Baidu and successively conducted website navigation station promotion, EDM promotion, alliance promotion, new media promotion and other promotion methods. These have nothing to do with SEO, but they can also attract many targeted users to the company's website.
Let's review my nearly 6 years of promotion work experience. In fact, I only had 4 months in charge of SEO. There are still more than five years of promotion methods, none of which have anything to do with SEO. What I want to tell some newcomers is that you can apply for promotion jobs at Internet companies without doing SEO. On the contrary, SEO training is very popular now. There are many people who know something about SEO, but there are relatively few people who know other promotion methods, and jobs will be easier to find.
As for how I promote my own websites, everyone knows better. I have shared them many times in my previous blogs, but they have no direct connection with SEO. I want to tell you through my real promotion experience in the past 6 years. SEO really does not equal online promotion. It can only be said that SEO is a very important promotion method in online promotion.
It is a tragedy for a website to rely solely on SEO, leaving its fate to search engines.
In addition to some of the promotion methods I mentioned above, there are more good non-SEO promotion methods. I have always firmly believed that as long as every promotion method is achieved to the extreme, it will not be worse than SEO. The key is to find what works best for you and then stick with it. This is safer than relying solely on SEO as a single promotion method. If the main traffic source of the website is through search engines, it means that the fate is left to the search engines.
First of all, SEO promotion competition is very fierce. For those who do it well, it is really easy to get traffic like a duck to water. However, there are still many people who have been pursuing SEO as the only promotion method for many years, but they have not achieved much promotion effect, thus wasting a lot of good opportunities to promote the website.
Taking a step back, no matter how awesome the SEO master is, he cannot guarantee that his website will not be K-ed by Baidu. If you are building a spammy website and making some quick money, it won't be a big deal if it is Ked by search engines. But if it is a regular website, a lot of time and energy has been invested, and the website has just started to improve, but unfortunately it is suddenly blocked by Baidu, will the website not continue to operate and promote it? The answer is definitely no. At this time, if there are more promotion methods and more traffic sources, you don’t have to worry about this problem. For example, for a newly launched website, the initial SEO effect is definitely not ideal, but because it cannot attract users through SEO in the early stage, can it not continue to promote the website?
Let me tell you another past incident that impressed me deeply.
In early 2006, I started writing a blog to share my online promotion experience. At that time, I had only been connected to the Internet for half a year. However, many old webmasters who have been working on websites for several years took the initiative to add me on QQ and asked me how to promote the website. I was surprised at the time, why did these people come to me, a newcomer, to ask for advice on how to promote the website after they had been working on the website for several years? In my opinion, it was a normal promotion method, but these webmasters had never used it.
Later, I gradually understood, because most webmasters at that time only knew SEO when doing promotion. After you build your own website, you will keep your eyes on the search engines. Once the search engines stop sending traffic, you don’t know what to do. Let the website fend for itself there.
On the contrary, I didn't understand SEO from 2005 to 2007, and I never thought about getting traffic from SEO. So I tried my best to think of other promotion methods to promote the website. When others see the promotion articles I wrote, they will find them very innovative, and then they will realize that online promotion is not just about SEO.
But I never expected that today, when all kinds of promotion methods are so widely circulated, there are still so many friends who do online promotion, and they still think that SEO is online promotion and is the only means of online promotion. Because of these feelings, I must write this article today to vent my feelings.
28 recommends public welfare training that does not teach SEO or online earning
As for SEO not equal to online promotion, I think the students of 28Tui public welfare training will be more profound. Although the public welfare training lasted for 5 months, SEO was never taught. Although 28Tui did not teach any experience about SEO, in these 5 months, not a single student would say that they did not know about online promotion. Of course, it does not mean that SEO is not important, because I have always felt that SEO is not what I am best at, so I will not teach SEO in public welfare training, so as not to mislead others. It is said that there are specializations in the industry. If there are new people who want to learn SEO, I recommend going to a more professional SEO training institution.
At the same time, 28Tui Charity Training is not an online earning training base. I found that most online earning projects are now based on SEO. 28 If you don’t teach SEO, you certainly won’t teach online earning. Although 28tui does not teach online earning, we learned from the graduation summary of the first phase of training that many students improved their promotion foundation and learning ability and found better jobs because of the 5 months of 28tui public welfare training. Or apply the promotion experience you learned to your own website to create more wealth. Moreover, these are all ways of making money that the students have discovered by themselves. They are not forced on them 28 times. They are more viable and sustainable.
That’s all for today’s complaints. Everyone is welcome to challenge the point of view that “SEO is not equal to online promotion” and leave a message to express your thoughts.
2011-7-31
The first address of this article is Mou Changqing’s online promotion blog: http://www.muchangqing.com/post/337.html (please keep it for reprinting)
Editor in charge: Yangyang author mcq0544's personal space