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As far as sending you website traffic, Google is definitely king.  That doesn’t mean, however, that you should ignore all of the other search engines.  As a matter of fact, being listed well in the minor search engines can also send you a lot of traffic that will work well towards making your business profitable.  Some of the search engines may actually be able to send you better qualified traffic than even Google can.  It all really depends on the demographics of those that end up on your website.  Let’s take a look at the other search engines and see what they can do for you.

A long time before Google ever even came onto the scene there was Yahoo.  This was more of a directory that a search engine whenever they first started out.  Even after they began to use Inktomi to run their search engine results, they still were struggling to offer quality to those that were actually searching for something on their website.  Throughout all of this time, their main thrust was toward their directory which was a human edited.  Eventually, Google came onto the scene and they had a fairly decent index as far as search engines are concerned.  For quite some time, they also were the search engine that drove the results which Yahoo displayed.  Eventually, Yahoo stopped using Google for their search engine results and switch back to something that was similar to Inktomi

Even though Yahoo is placing a distant second to Google’s traffic, they can still drive quite a lot of people to your website if you are positioned well.  The problem with this is it can be very difficult to rise in Yahoo’s rankings rather quickly.  They seem to have slowed down after everybody was doing the blog and ping scenario to death.  You can still get decent rankings in Yahoo, however, simply by getting plenty of decent links into your website.  You may also be able to rank better if you pay for a listing in their directory.

MSN comes in a distant third as far as search engine traffic is concerned.  Still, you are able to get some very qualified visitors from the search engine if you can rank well for competitive keyword phrases.  It seems that those who come from MSN are more likely to buy or take some other action than those that are visiting from Google or Yahoo.  The reason why this may be the case is because those that are coming from the larger search engines tend to be a little bit more technically savvy than those coming from MSN.

The next time that you are stressing over your Google rankings, take a look at how well you’re doing on the other search engines.  Put a little bit of work into it and you will begin to reap the rewards of good listings outside of the Google empire.

Of all of the traffic that you can get your website, some of the best visitors will come as a direct result of your website being listed in the search engines.  Not only is this traffic very targeted, since they are looking for something specific, it is also free, which makes it all the more valuable.  In an effort to gain this free search engine traffic, many individuals have begun employing various search engine optimization techniques to help their websites to rank better.  These techniques come in two basic forms, on page and off page optimization.  Although on page optimization is important for you to understand, it is the off page optimization that will really propel your website to the top of the list.

Although there are many different things that you can do in order to improve your search engine rankings, the most popular and most effective is through obtaining inbound links to your website.  These links can take on a variety of different forms and they can come from a number of different areas but some of them are much more effective than others.  Let’s start at the bottom of the list of links that you can obtain and work our way up to the most effective.

Several years ago, it was very common for individuals to exchange links to their websites.  This was a process that is known as reciprocal linking and it helped many people to be able to gain SEO ground within the various search engines.  Unfortunately, this pattern of linking was also very easy to exploit and many websites overdid the process until it became almost the useless.  Today, the search engines put very little value on a reciprocal link but that doesn’t mean that it has no value whatsoever.  It should still hold a position in your SEO efforts, just make sure you don’t focus entirely on this type of link.

Another type of link is a one-way link that comes from efforts that you make to get listed on a variety of different websites.  These can include directory links, links from articles that you have written and links in forum posts that you have made.  One of the most popular of these is article marketing where you write articles on topic, post them to the various article directories around the Internet and include a link back to your website.  This can help you to gain some ground in the search engines if it is done properly and persistently.

The holy grail of links, however, is a one-way link from a well-established, on topic website.  Unfortunately, these are very difficult to obtain as many of these websites will not link out to other sites.  If you make your content compelling enough, however, you may get some natural links from these websites.  You can also offer to write original content for their website in exchange for a link.  What ever it takes to get your link on their site, it is well worth the effort as this will help to propel you to the top.

Below are some more great ressources about Off Page Search Engine Optimization.

Role of Directories in Link Building

Edu & Gov Links

On-Page and Off-Page Optimization

Top SEO Blogs by RSS Subscribers

To your success!

Guido Nussbaum