Google is known for being the king of the search engines, always one step ahead of its competitors. Their advanced constantly changing algorithm and special Page Rank system has made them the most successful search engine history. Google is not only a search engine, but also one of the biggest internet advertising agencies in the world. All of this success occurred because Google catered to the interests and needs of their site visitors. By providing quality search results that are extremely relevant to search phrases. Likewise, Google tries to stay relevant with the times by changing the appearance of their home page on historic events.  However, recently, Google officially changed its name to Topeka.

Topeka?

Topeka, Kansas is a small town in the heartland of America that is on the verge of becoming a ghost town. The mayor of Topeka announced that he was going to formally change the name of his town to Google, about a month after Google announced plans for a unique contest. The mayor believed that this gesture would persuade Google to select the town for a contest that would let the winner test a new kind of ultrafast broadband connection. After seeing the benefits of fast broadband with his own eyes, the mayor of Topeka decided to enter the contest and give it his best shot. By changing the name he sent a serious message to a serious company, and his town became famous overnight.

A Historic Day

The event proved to be a tremendous publicity stunt for the town of Topeka, and it has certainly left its mark on history by catching the attention of Google for a day. Google said that they had decided to change their name to Topeka after browsing the City of Topeka’s Municipal Web Site. In fact, Google said they felt a kinship to the city the more they learned about them. Google did not announce any plans to change their name back to the original one that has made them so successful. After about 24 hours Google reclaimed its world famous name, leaving the town of Topeka with a special day in history. In fact, there has never been another case of a massive corporation trading its name with a small town in Kansas.

The Result

The day after the town received the highest amount of searches on Google in their town’s history. People from all over the world wanted to know why Google would choose this small town to trade names with. It seems as if Google may have given the town of Topeka a bit of an economic boost by creating a social stigma about it overnight. Google even changed the sign in front of their headquarters to read “Topeka”. Google has educated the world about hundreds of authors, artists, politicians, scientists, doctors, and leaders of all kinds. Pay attention to the design above the Google search bar the next time you are executing a web search.

Bing is Microsoft’s version of a search engine, similar to Google. While Google is the industry leader in the market today, Bing is trying to grab a piece of Google’s market share. Search engines primarily generate their money from internet marketers paying the company per click (or impression) to advertise their website by keyword.

Highly clicked keywords tend to cost more per click due to the amount of users that use the keyword in a search. The biggest part of search engine optimization is to create websites that can be found on the search engines within the first few pages. This increases the number of visitors and thus conversions.

This raises an important question: is Bing an effective search engine for generating traffic? If it isn’t then internet marketers shouldn’t spend time and money attempting to target Bing users.

To answer this question: Yes and no. Bing is effective in certain areas of the world and not in others. This all relates to their marketing strategy and advertising. In the United States, there are many more advertisements for Bing than for Google. The difference being that Google has become a household name and doesn’t need to advertise.

A few areas that make Bing an effective search engine are:

• Dominant in some territories
• Brings targeted traffic
• Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The primary advantage of Bing is that it is the dominant search engine in some areas of the world. In turn, this brings in much more targeted traffic. Consequently in an emerging market where Bing dominates, an internet marketer will be quite successful. Another advantage is the easy to use graphical user interface that makes transactions a breeze.

There are two areas that Bing is not effective including:

• Lack of overall traffic
• Slow at indexing pages

These are two extremely important areas. Google holds a huge chunk of the search engine market while others, such as Bing are trying to catch up. With a lack of overall traffic, it can be unprofitable to pump money into advertising nobody will see. Also, with slow indexing of new pages, this costs the web owner money since nobody knows the page is there during the index interval.

In general, Bing is effective when simply targeting a specific geographic area. With a lack of overall traffic, it may not be profitable to invest in Bing just yet. Microsoft is constantly working on this decision engine to improve traffic, so stick around; Bing might give Google a run for their money.

Finding the right domain name is often a difficult process that involves intense brainstorming, as well as the annoying procedure of trying to find a name that is available and suitable for your website. Once you have found a good domain, it is even harder to find another good one as the number of premium domains is quickly dwindling. In fact, there are barely any premium domain names available online today, as the market has become so saturated, and is expected to become even more saturated as we progress into the 21^st century.

Experts predict that all .com domains that are shorter than 7 letters and are relevant to a popular keyword will be gone by the half way mark of the 21^st century. This means that a good domain name is like prime real estate at the moment, and even though domains cost less than houses, their value is steadily rising despite the scare that the market experienced in the early 2000′s. If you are having trouble finding a good domain name for your other websites after being successful with one domain name, then you may want to consider using a subdomain. Subdomains are also excellent for search engine optimization.

Subdomains and Search Engine Optimization

The reason why subdomains are perfect for search engine optimization is because they are actually viewed as their won website by search engine crawlers. This means that each subdomain receives it’s own page ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Another distinct advantage of subdomains, is that you do not have to pay for another domain name registry or an extra hosting account. Instead you can simply use your existing domain name and establish an entirely new web presence with your subdomain.

Subdomains and Sub Niches

A great way to use subdomains for search engine optimization is to create subdomains on your site that are relevant to a main keyword or industry. Within each sub domain  you could place content that focuses on that keyword. For example, you may have a primary domain name that is called “highqualitywritingtools.com.” To further capitalize on this niche, and to enhance your search engine presence through diversification, you could open up several sub domains for free that pertain to a variety of sub niches such as: “ballpens.highqualitywritingtools.com” or “compositionnotepads. highqualitywritingtools.com”. By creating subdomains on your main niche site that target long tail keywords, you;re generating extremely targeted automatic traffic for your site.

Subdomains and Backlinks

Another advantage to subdomains is that each subdomain is considered to be another site in the search engines, which means you can link your subdomains to each other, and then link them all to your main site to build a backlink farm. This kind of internal link building, if done correctly, is a great way to get your site(s) indexed in the search engines quickly, and to get a higher page ranking with little effort. Remember that the most important aspect of backlink building is quality. Simply setting up a bunch of subdomains for the sole purpose of setting up backlinks is not going to benefit you, in fact it would prove to be detrimental to your site’s page ranking. Instead, you should make sure each page is populated with relevant and high quality content. Then once the site is populated with content you can begin building a proper link structure that interlinks all of your sites into a traffic generating network.

It seems as if the entire world has shifted their focus towards Google and has forgotten about the once ever-so popular Yahoo. Although Google has taken over the search engine industry, there are still a huge group of internet users that use Yahoo loyally, and excluding them form your marketing campaign can be extremely negative towards the growth of your online business. Even if 90% of your traffic is coming from Google, are you willing to throw away the other ten percent due to an oversight in your marketing venue?

You may be under the impression that all search engines follow the same rules when ranking websites but this is simply not true. Yahoo’s search engine standards vary slightly from that of Google’s so it is important to consider the difference when designing your website. The best approach is to build a website that appeases all of the major search engines, including Yahoo. The following information will give you an idea of what Yahoo is looking for.

Link Organization

When it comes to indexing of your website, Yahoo’s crawlers pay extra attention toward the internal structure of the site. Google focuses more on external links such as backlinks, which also matter  for Yahoo optimization, but not as much. In fact, it is possible to have  high ranking site in yahoo with hardly any backlinks! However if your site has  a disorganized internal link structure, then you are going to have a very hard time making it to the top page of Yahoo’s search results. This means you’ll need to devise a site map and submit it to Yahoo for maximum success.

Anchor Text

Instead of simply posting URLs, it is best to use anchor text containing keywords. Anchor texts that contain keywords will enhance your Yahoo SEO efforts by double. Make sure the keyword used in the anchor text is relevant to the page you are linking to.

Keyword Optimization with Title Tags

Of course this trick works with all search engines, but it is extremely important in Yahoo. By putting primary keywords in the main title tags of your web pages, you’ll find that many of your pages gain a very high page rank quickly. Yahoo pays very close attention towards tags of all sorts including meta tags.

Search Engine Optimized URLs

Make sure all of your site’s URLs contain relevant keyword. If you are using a good content management system then this step will be done automatically. A good way to optimize URLs to be search engine friendly is to place dashes between words on key phrases. For example, instead of using the URL “ example.com/lookatthislink” you could use the URL “example.com/look-at-this-link.” Using this simple trick will boost your search engine ranking in Yahoo greatly.

Quality Content

Yahoo places a high priority on the quality of the content. This means that stuffing your content with keywords and writing about anything will not work, in fact it will be very detrimental towards the ranking of your web page. To be successful ion Yahoo you’ll need to use quality content with the correct keyword density and placement.

Social bookmarking has become one of the best ways for website owners to draw attention to their site exponentially. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of social bookmarking; think Digg or Twitter. Any social site that users can place a link to a certain page on is considered a social bookmarking site. People use these sites to share information or media that they find to be useful or entertaining with their friends and family. These sites make browsing the web a fun and exciting experience because people can find out what is new and interesting without trying to find it themselves. By placing your site on a social bookmarking site, you’ll not only receive direct attention to your site immediately, but you’ll also receive search engine optimization benefits as well.

The Connection Between SEO and Social Bookmarking

Proper search engine optimization requires the use of many methods combined in a collective effort to bring as much traffic to the site as possible. The more traffic your site gets, the more popular it appears to be form the perspective of a search engine. Therefore website popularity is almost like a snowball effect, as the popularity builds the page rank rises and it becomes a progressive traffic generating cycle. Social bookmarking lets you expose your site to a wide group of people, many of which run their own blogs, which are indexed in the search engines just as regular websites are. If someone links to your site on their blog, they are creating what is called a backlink for your site. The more live backlinks your site has on the internet, the more popular it appears to be, and the more favoritism it will receive from the search engines. Perhaps the most important connection between search engine optimization and social bookmarking is that your site can receive popularity before it is ever indexed in the search engines, which ironically is an excellent way to get your site indexed!

Utilizing the Full Power of Social Bookmarking

Since there are so many social bookmarking sites online, it would be foolish to target only one of them. However submitting your link to each one manually can be a time intensive process. Fortunately there are ways to accomplish this without wasting time completing repetitive menial tasks. You have two options; you can outsource the work to another person, or you can use an application that will complete the task for you with very minimal input. The first option is almost self-explanatory – simply hire a freelancer, tell him to sign up to as many social bookmarking sites as you’d like, and then tell them to make a post about your site. You can also pay many freelancers a few pennies each to visit your site and vote it up using the social bookmarking buttons on your site. The second option is a bit more tricky but costs less and is equally effective if done correctly. Simply find an application, or have one made that will complete the aforementioned task automatically. You can find out about applications like these at online forums or by doing a simple web search.

Final Thoughts

While social bookmarking sites are a great way to market your site, they are also inundated with other marketers and spammers, so it is important to remember that this is a numbers game. The more amount of work you put int, the more results you’ll see. The key to improving search engine optimization with social bookmarking is consistency.