How does your customer find you?

How does your customer find you?  How diversified are your efforts.  Do they find you in Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Foursquare, Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yahoo Directory, Google, Bing, Yahoo.com.  Do you really know?  If not (well thats another post) then you should probably start to look at that.

The reason for my question is simple, I want to provoke thoughts.  Your results should come from many different areas, diversification is very important to E-commerce stability.  The method of search for your customer is changing.  New methods are created by for your customer every year.  Most of these new methods do not use traditional search.  

If you are only working in the world of traditional search, you could be left behind in the future.  Just image what would happen to your business if Google, Bing, and Yahoo were no longer in business.  Your business is in an awesome position right now.  You are at the beginning of a changing "internet".  The traditional methods are loosing ground.      

• Index search is like a word processor, it was once the best thing in the world, now it’s just another thing we do
• Google provided leadership and commoditized content in the beginning.  Now its available in so many other avenues that are easier to access.
• People have chosen non-commoditized content in overwhelming amounts - apps, portals, directories, social forums.  
• Because things are going mobile, people find their content differently.  More than half of all searches for some kind of content is from a mobile device.

I don't want to say that any major search engine is going down in the near future.  I think all search engines can find their niche as the years go on, but traditional search will change in a major way.  People will continue to find content in other ways more convenient ways?  Some of you may be asking what brought the change, the social and mobile movements change the game for SEO.

Top search engine rankings are critical for the success of any new or modern business.  However, I do argue that as marketers we must identify the trends, and adapt to them. The social and mobile movement changed the way people find content.  In some cases, people are not searching for content that they want, the content is finding them through one forum or another.

Its a very exciting time to start an online business on the web, there are more opportunities than ever.  This past year was the highest black friday ever on the web and the following day also set a record.  Continue to work on your business and think about how your customer finds you and what areas you can branch out to.