SEO King Online

Ah the wonderful world of search engine optimization and search engine marketing. I could write all day and night about it (and sometimes I do!).

But the world of SEO and SEM can be confusing (that’s an understatement!) especially if you are somewhat new to the industry. Everyone and his or her brother think they know what the secret is to getting a top search engine ranking and all the free, highly targeted traffic that comes with it.

But the truth is, very few people really know – and the ones that do know, don’t *really* know. Only the search engines themselves really know, the rest of us just trial and error figure it out and piece things together that *mostly* work today.

But then the search engines go and change the rules, and we have to start all over again learning the new rules (that the search engines never tell us!).

And besides, the people that are really good at figuring out these rules and applying them to get good rankings are usually out there DOING it! They are making lots and lots of money either ranking their own web sites and cashing in that way, or working for clients and charging an arm and a leg.

They don’t have time to sit and explain their secrets to you, and they wouldn’t want to anyway! A secret is no longer a secret if everyone knows about it!

Ah, you ask, but you Jason are talking to us today?! What gives?

Well it’s true, I am talking to you today, but I’m not telling you my secrets! I’m here today to share some basic information, common knowledge that you need to know to do any SEO or SEM work but won’t get me in trouble for giving away the store (if you know what I mean!).

So the first thing many people ask me is this: which search engines should I focus on?

That’s an excellent question. There are thousands of search engines out there, millions maybe even. But the fact is, 99.9% of them are completely useless and worthless because no one uses them to search for web sites!

Instead, you really want to focus on just the main three search engines. Those are, in order of importance, Google, Yahoo and Bing. If you have lots of free time you can also focus on ask.com but they are not hardly worth it anymore.

The big three are the ones to focus on, and maybe even just the big 2, Google and Bing, because Yahoo and Bing signed a deal late last year 2009 to allow Yahoo to use Bing search results as the primary search results on Yahoo. So for all intents and purposes, when this agreement goes into effect in the first quarter 2010, there will be no more Yahoo search engine. (Ie, if you get your site listed in Bing, it will show up in Yahoo because Yahoo will be showing Bing search results).

So there you have it, focus on Google and Bing. I usually just focus on Google, because they have 65% of the search traffic in the world and Bing/Yahoo have another 30%.

And see…I haven’t given away any trade secrets at all!

Lets face it, Google is the dominating search engine, and will most likely continue to be that in the foreseeable future, there is thousands of smaller search engines that are working hard to gain a piece of the search marketplace for themselves.

The English language market for search is dominated by a few big behemoths. According to comScore the market for search in October 2009 was dominated by Google (65.4%), Yahoo (18.0%), Microsoft (9.9%), Ask (3.9%) and AOL (2.9%), followed by MapQuest, eBay, craigslist, Fox, MySpace, Facebook and Amazon.

With the search market valued at $300 Billion that makes every single 1% worth $3 Billion when selling the company and you would do very well by conquering just a 0.1% slice of that cake. The number of start up search engines is only going to increase with more venture capital wanting a piece of the market.

This is the top 7 search engines that the 2010 blog headlines are likely to gossip around. New or old, they all have in common that they deliver good search results and they have been innovating in 2009.

Cuil

With two ex Googlers, Anna Patterson and Russell Power, in the management team and by claiming to be the worlds biggest search engine Cuil has a lot to deliver.

Overloaded servers generating low quality search results hampered the  2008 launch giving Cuil a fair amount of negative media attention but of you try a search today you’ll find the search results are really good and there is an explore by category function that is among the best I’ve seen.

DuckDuckGo

The search engine with the silly name and a cute interface uses a combination of Yahoo BOSS, Wikipedia and it’s own crawler DuckDuckBot to give you both hard information in a Zero-click information box, categories to further refine searches and the actual search results.

Founded by Gabriel Weinberg, who started and then sold The Names Database, DuckDuckGo is a private venture that has grown steadily since it launched in September 2008. Watch out for this search engine in 2010, it has a nice niche carved out for itself

Spezify

A totally cool search engine, Spezify. The search results are showcased as images and newspaper clippings pasted all over the computer screen, the clippings having one paragraph quotes from the result web site. By scanning some of the clippings you get a excellent overview of the matter you are researching and can make an informed decision on which search results to visit and read more about.

It’s also a great brainstorming tool. You’ll get a ton of new ideas for your article or blog post just by entering your keyword into the search box and watching the resulting mix of clippings and photos.

Secret Search Engine Labs

This search engine ranks sites differently than the big mainstream search engines. As Google gives priority to aged and big sites, many new, small and relevant sites are hard to find in their search results. The algorithm of Secret Search Engine Labs ranks sites according to on page factors and link anchor text and removes spam pages using the trademarked CashRank method.

A search engine that puts more weight on web page content than on site authority and that provides useful info to webmasters on how the search results are calculated, Secret Search Engine Labs was started in 2007 by Finnish software engineer and entrepreneur Simon Byholm with the aim to grow slowly into the best search engine on the Web.

Bing

First there was MSN Search, then Live Search and now with the latest re-branding we have Bing. With a forceful marketing campaign Microsoft has managed to grab almost 10% of the market for search. The media attention during the re-launch has fueled innovation adding new features like the daily changing background image, suggested topics and trends.

With Microsoft working fiercely to increase Bing’s market share you should watch them closely during 2010.

Blekko

This is a brand new start-up that is keeps it’s mouth shut almost as well as Old Google when you ask about the what and the when of their new search engine. The strong management team with ex-employees from Topix, Google, AOL and Netscape Search has me wondering if they have something fascinating going on.

We are still waiting eagerly  for Blekkos public launch. It was promised for the end of 2009 though so you can assume that it will make some serious headlines in 2010. We can only hope it’s good and exciting news.

Monitter

Monitter is not a classic search engine but a real-time Twitter search where you can monitor several keywords and see the tweets containing those keywords in real time as they are tweeted. When you need to monitor you niche or area of expertise or if you just want to track the conversation this is a neat tool.

There Are More Search Engines, Right?

I think you know that Google is innovating and it’s pretty sure they will make some noise in 2010. Wolfram Alpha is fascinating as it is the only major search engine that makes the results from data.

There’s a multitude of social, real-time or just weird search engines starting up and there’s no telling if one of them develops into the next Twitter and makes a permanent mark in the search market. You’ll find more information about these and many more at AltSearchengines.com

There is finally signs that we could see big changes in the search engine landscape after years of rule by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. There’s new technology sprouting like mushrooms in every nook of the Net. There’s semantic search, visual presentation, real time search and socially powered search engines created. If nothing else is achieved at least the old behemoths will have to adopt the new technology to stay competitive, giving us better search results in the process.

With the sudden increase in technology advances, small businesses and entrepreneurs are beginning to look for new and innovative ways of reaching their target audience. During Search Engine Optimization, it is always best to be listed in search engine indexes. But, it is also very beneficial for a business to submit their information to local-search engines.

The overall objective of a local search engine is the importance of narrowing down a visitors search. For example, Bob may only want to see the listings for Charlotte Web Design companies in Charlotte, North Carolina and not nationwide. If Bob were to visit Yahoo or Google, he would be able to specify his results and receive better listings.

Top Local Search Engines

• Yahoo Local Listings
• Ask Local
• MSN Local Search
• Google Local Search

These top local search engines offer their services for free. They allow a business to submit their company’s information directly to their local search engines. Doing so helps to increase the possibility of being found during a search.

The process of submitting a company’s background information is fairly easy. The type of information normally needed includes:

• Street Address
• Website URL
• Description of Company
• Operating Hours
• Phone/Fax Number
• Year of Establishment
• Company Logo or Picture

Being listed in search engines such as Google and MSN often draws in a company’s much needed traffic. In addition to other promotional endeavors, taking advantage of local search engines can be very beneficial to any business or entrepreneur.

About CODANK Charlotte Web Design

CODANK is a top Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company located in Charlotte, NC. The company is dedicated to providing a broad range of web design services. CODANK specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Graphic Design, Online Marketing, and Web Design and Development.

For more information, visit CODANK Charlotte Web Design and Internet Marketing Company at www.codank.com

Many online businesses suffer from low traffic and low page ranking. This is because many of these online business owners are not fully knowledgeable in how to drive traffic to their site and be ranked high in every major search engines.

The race to lead every major search engines is very stiff because of hundreds and even thousands of sites that are being added daily to the Internet. What every site wants is for them to be in the first page of every major search engines. Studies have shown that website visitors usually do not bother going to the next page that will result for your site to be ignored permanently if it is on the second page.

This is most often the very dilemma of many online businesses that have websites. The owners do not have an inch of a clue as far as on how to efficiently market their products and services. Furthermore, they are not knowledgeable enough on what to do in order to dominate page rank results in major search engines. They spend a lot to have a website which never ranked on top of Google, Yahoo, MSN or Bing.

Quality SEO or search engine optimization is solution to this dilemma. All an online entrepreneur has to do is to hire a quality SEO company to do the task of having its website ranked on top of every major search engines. This SEO Company has a team of professionals who are experts on their own fields. These professionals are tasked to do every possible SEO basics in order to have their client’s website ranked top on Google, Yahoo or Bing. These SEO professionals, likewise, are tasked to give every possible solution to drive large traffic to their client’s website.

So if you want your online business to be successful, hire a quality SEO Company to attract visitors to your website and dominate the first page of every major search engines.