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.