Being listed in Google’s search engine is free, and if your site is relevant, useful, and search engine optimized, you will show up near the top of the search results for your important key words or phrases. What needs to be kept in mind, is that Google makes no guarantee of your placement now or in the future. At any time they can change their algorithm that determines websites’ rankings in their search results. For many website owners that have good placement in the Google search engine, 50% or more of their traffic is derived from Google searches. I don’t mean to be alarmist, but what if your ranking in Google fell to page 20 of their results? It is not likely, but it has happened. (It is not likely that your house will catch fire, but you probably have insurance if it does.) So what’s a website owner to do?

It is not a good plan to rely on a major portion of your website’s traffic to come from a free service that you have no direct control over. It is important to market your website through means other than Google. Here are some other very effective options.

• Be prepared to initiate a pay-per-click campaign if your Google rankings drop.
• Get listed in industry related, relevant, high quality directories.
• Obtain as many inbound links from relevant, quality websites as possible.
• For brick and mortar businesses, get listed in Google Local listings.
• If you sell products, use Google Base, Ebay, and Craig’s List to list them.
• Maintain a blog that you post to nearly daily with links back to your site’s pages.
• Have a well built emailing list.
• Join MySpace and FaceBook.
• Get familiar with and use Digg.
• Set up a Squidoo Lens.
• Join relevant online forums and contribute to them.
• Answer questions on http://answers.yahoo.com and link to your site in signature.
• Write industry related e-articles for website that will publish them.
• Newspaper, magazine, brochure, catalog advertising.
• Your URL on everything mailed from your office.
• Your URL on all in-house documents that go to clients/customers.

The interesting thing about all of these tactics is that they will help your Google placement now and act as a buffer against traffic loss if you lose, if even only temporarily, your Google ranking in the future.