Online Marketing Without Google - Can it be Done?!
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Search Guru (and good buddy) Jennifer Laycock over at Search Engine Guide has launched a new project. She and Lactivist reader Abigail Munday have started a new niche site selling bento products to Americans (and others) who can’t easily get these adorable and functional Japanese boxes easily. (What’s a bento box?!)
As an experiment, Jennifer has B-L-O-C-K-E-D indexing of their site at BentoYum.com. That’s right- she’s disallowed ALL SEARCH ENGINES from showing the site in results. She is strictly relying on the following promotional tactics to build traffic (and sales):
- Referring site links
- Social media
- Blog search engines like Technorati
- Social bookmarking
You may think Jennifer and Abigail are crazy to keep search engines out of their marketing mix. To be honest, they will allow them later - but for now, this is a case study for small business owners - to help them understand that having all of your eggs in the search engine basket isn’t a smart success strategy.
And to prove it, they are selling so many bento boxes that they are consistently sold out of products. This is an excellent case study for any business who wants to sell more stuff online.
Dare I say it, MUST READ.
Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Kelly McCausey is an internet marketer, blog publisher, podcaster
and web business coach. Host of 
Bill Parlaman is owner of 
All I can say is it is working! I had to buy one for myself. I love the ritual these boxes create around something as simple as lunch.
I will be waiting for the results of this project.
I am so glad you blogged about this. And I will add a little anecdote.
The other day I was doing some simple stumbleupon-ing and I randomly came across a Hello Kitty bento box page.
Since I read Search Engine Guide, I knew about Jennifer’s Bento Yum site.
I looked up her email address and sent her the link. She sent a nice reply. I don’t know her from Adam but she seems quite accessible and friendly.
This is the power of social media, people! Just today, i got an email offering fantastic feedback for Guest Blogger. And it was from a dude who’s blog I’d commented on today.
So get your social media on!
That is impressive. But, I believe that Jennifer is leveraging her readership at her wonderful site - the Lactivist to generate traffic to the bento box site - and the Lactivist IS listed in the search engines.
I think it would be a lot harder to launch a product oriented site without the use of search engines if you didn’t already have a successful site to publicize it on.
I agree with what Neena said, with an established reader base it is much easier to generate business than starting from scratch.
What would be more interesting would be to start a site completely from scratch and THEN see how well it would do using the aforementioned tactics.
Although I agree with both of you as well, it is a testament as to how important it is to network and build solid relationships with others online - so until you have your own established readers to leverage - leverage someone else’s audience!
I think this will be interesting to follow. The buzz that she will pick up fro m the marketing effort may lead to loyal readership and linking from the blogging community. We will now see if the power of social networking is as strong as they say it is.
Bento looks so awesome! Too bad they keep selling out. I’d love to order stuff.
If anyone can pull this off Jennifer can. In the few months I’ve gotten to know her through her site The Lactivist, I am completely impressed. I need to order a copy of her book SEG but for $79 I need to make sure I have the time to actually read it!
It would be interesting to see if someone can pull off creating a whole new popular blog without any tie to other blogs that are in search engines. Maybe as her next experiment, she can take on some of us new bloggers as case studies and see how it goes?
I think the case study is fantastic, and I can’t wait to read more about their results. I love it when people can prove that Google doesn’t rule the internet!
And Bento is very interesting indeed, I’m going to have to blog about that later tonight. Right now I need to go grab a snack because looking at all those bento lunches made me hungry!
It’s interesting how 15 years ago, this wouldn’t even be an issue, and now blocking one’s site from search engines is seen as radical. How quickly things change…
Like some people have commented before me , I think the results would be a bit skewed. With an established site to help publicize the new one and friends like you, who are popular, blogging about the experiment, it’s bound to be a success even without the search engines. I don’t think it would work so well for us less famous folk. But then, I guess it should push some of us (like me) to socialize more. Who you are and who you know definitely matter.