Pulling Google – Most modern SEO theories originate from trying to push a website to the top of Google’s rankings.

They start with the idea that your website is the one that should be called on, and they give you methods on how to get the teacher’s attention. They teach you how to raise your hand higher, how to squirm just a bit more, how to sigh with extreme disappointment when the teacher picks the website that is obviously their favorite.

This is push SEO, and it does work for many people. The problem with push SEO is that our ‘classroom’ is enormous.

We are asking Google to select our site from literally thousands, if not millions, of websites that all offer something on the subject at hand. We may think we have the best thing to offer, but Google doesn’t know that.

Lately, however, a theory or method seems to be emerging that counters the idea of push SEO. Rather than asking you to change your website to fit Google’s standards of a ‘good result’, this theory is supposed to change Google’s standards literally.

Google Has a Confidence Issue

I have already admitted to having a childish mind that creates fantastic visions of how the world works, but I really think that Google has a confidence issue. They are the ultimate ‘know-it-alls’. Most of us are annoyed by that person who is quick to correct us in a small detail or who seems to have an answer to just about every question, but Google does just that.

Think about it – if you search for’ amazin”wAmazon will with “Did you mean: amazon?”.Amazon, wanting, and rude, can a search engine be? How can they assume they know what I’m looking for?

All joking aside, they usually do know what we are looking for.

They are so supremely confident that they understand what we are looking for because they have successfully responded to millions of questions daily for the past several years. But like most people with confidence issues, if they feel that they are being left out on a particular topic, they develop a feeling of inadequacy.

As a result, Google is constantly trying to know everything about everything. The idea behind pull SEO is to tell Google that they are wrong or that they don’t know something, and that you have the website they need to know about.

Mike Grehan on Pull SEO

I was first introduced to the idea of pull SEO by Mike Grehan, a man, in my opinion, who understands real SEO rather than just a bunch of SEO tricks. Although I don’t know the man personally (and I would be happy to make his acquaintance), he is the one person who most closely echoes my thoughts on SEO.

Recently, he posted an interesting article on his blog about how an in-progress event can affect search results.

For example, consider a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina. When the Hurricane hit, it was all that was on our minds and hearts, and as a result, it was what people searched for on Google. Consequently, the search results of the significant search engines changed.

Think about it – anytime a major disaster hits, it becomes the primary subject of search engines.

When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, searches for his name dominated the search engine charts. After Janet Jackson’s right breast was exposed during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, search engines were quickly used as a resource to relive the questionable moment. After September 11th, the world flocked to a younger Google to find information on the World Trade Center and Osama Bin Laden.

If you think like a search engine, being able to present up-to-date information based on the news of the day gives you a distinct competitive advantage.

If you have the results people are looking for faster than others, then you suddenly become the trusted resource everyone looks to. Mike discusses the idea of pull marketing in several other posts and how he actually uses it in his professional SEO consultations. I’m not sure if Mike is the originator of the pull SEO idea, but he was the first person I learned this theory from.

Marketing in a Bathroom

I read an interesting comment at Threadwatch that gives a great example of how pull SEO can actually work.

The comment related to a story that seems pretty familiar in the world of website owners. A new website owner, completely unfamiliar with search engine optimization and website marketing, was looking for help. In an effort to help market the website, the owner was instructed to place Post-it notes with his website address on them in several bathrooms.

What was the result of this marketing activity? Within a few months, his website rose to the top of the search engine ranking. He started to see a good amount of traffic, and his search engine woes were quickly resolved.

What SEO work did this person actually do? In all reality, there was no SEO work at all – just regular viral marketing.

Making a Splash Big Enough To Notice – The Real Payoff

Allow me to be overdramatic for a moment, but if you want to get to the top of Google, you not only have to be the website that shows all the information possible on Hurricane Katrina, you also have to be the website that causes Hurricane Katrina.

In other words, if you want to get to the top of the ranking, make enough noise that people start searching for your website, independent of ‘just finding’ you in the search engine results pages.

If Google’s base is hammering their search results to know more about BlueWidgets.com, then they will ultimately serve BlueWidgets.com as a result to their users. If they fail to do this, then they will lose trust among their users.

Mike Grehan often discusses the impact of a client launching a major television commercial campaign and how it has an immediate effect on the client’s search engine rankings. This is not a coincidence, but a direct result of raising awareness of a website and Google responding to that new awareness.

The Reality – Small Businesses Have Trouble Making Big Splashes

Pull SEO is good in theory, and it’s very effective for a Fortune 500 corporation.

However, small companies will likely struggle to utilize pull SEO. Making a big publicity splash is either very expensive or involves something so unique and revolutionary that making a splash is relatively easy.

And for the small company that can grab a lot of attention independently of the search engines, getting a top ranking really becomes secondary to all the news coverage they are probably receiving.

But maybe this is the way it should actually be.

Is it possible that the way to get to the top of the rankings is to develop a plan for making our websites popular, independent of the search engines? If we can create enough buzz about our website, then search engine rankings, although nice, suddenly become less of a focus.

Put Your Hand Down – Get Your Marketing Geared Up

Google asks us millions of questions every day. Which website should they rank first for every topic that people ask about?

Naturally, we want to raise our hands, hoping that Google will call on us to answer their users’ needs. But in all reality, we need to put our hands down and start working.

Relying on a single entity, such as Google, is a bad strategy. Google, as I mentioned earlier, is the ultimate stroke of luck for a webmaster’s ego. It is the ‘icing on the cake’, the affirmation of a job well done. It is not, however, the goal in and of itself.

Your goal is to be successful, independent of Google. Make your website buzzworthy, and Google will eventually take notice. Google cannot ignore the demands of thousands of users.

posted excerpts by Mark Daoust