Where to post to get good search engine traffic
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Though the hipsters will undoubtedly say they knew better, the court of public opinion shows that Google is the only search engine worth worrying about. In actual business practice, your primary search engine depends on your business and its goals.
And, not for anything, if you are having trouble ranking in Google search (or worse, have been penalized), then you will need to distribute your eggs from the Google basket and into others. Let’s look at four search engines that are worth your optimization time and efforts.
Bing
While it may never surpass Google in terms of reach or popularity, Microsoft’s Bing is certainly making a ruckus. Thanks to a tried-and-true, but still effective, marketing approach, the Bing team is working to become known as the source for relevant user results.
On the upside, most of the optimization work you do for Google rankings will also help with your Bing rankings. This includes the following:
- Onsite optimization of your title tags, meta description, and content for keywords.
- Offsite optimization of your website through link building.
Bing also offers their own webmaster tools system to help website owners learn more about how to optimize their website in Bing search, as well as monitor their presence on Bing.
As a matter of fact, there’s a good chance that you’ll rank better in Bing faster than you will Google. You can keep an eye on your website rankings in Google, Bing, and Yahoo using tools like Authority Labs and WhooshTraffic.
Did you know that Facebook gets almost a one billion search queries per day? And this was before they started rolling out Facebook Graph Search. In short, Facebook should be the focal point of a business’ social search.
So, how do you make sure you’re ranking well in Facebook search? Since Facebook search is personalized based on a user’s connections and interests, it is extremely difficult to track rankings across the board.
To ensure more appearances in Facebook search results:
- Complete your profile or page details.
- Incorporate keywords into your page in the about description.
- Build your likes with targeted fans.
Additionally, local businesses should encourage customers to check in on Facebook so their friends will be able to find the business page when searching profiles.
YouTube
YouTube has one billion visitors per month, making it the third most popular website in the world. To capitalize on this traffic, you must incorporate videos into your content and online marketing strategy.
Fortunately, there are many ways to do this without having professional recording experience or technology. You can do some or all of the following.
- Record screencasts with Screenflow.
- Host regular Google+ hangouts.
- Create video interviews using Skype.
- Use tools like VideoScribe to create animated videos.
- Encourage customers to record video testimonials.
- Find video creators on Fiverr.
Once you’ve started uploading videos to YouTube, you can use this report to help you boost your video rankings.
Local Search
Despite the ever-growing global economy, many would argue that all business is local. If you have a local business, you will want to rank well on local search networks, primarily Google+ Local and Yelp. While the networks are inherently different, they share many qualities that help your business rank well, including:
- Completing your business listing with as much information as possible.
- Adding photos and videos.
- Getting a high volume of positive reviews from established users.
- Getting a range of reviews.
While you are not permitted to solicit reviews with offers such as “Get a 20% discount by posting a review on Google+ or Yelp,” you can encourage people to leave reviews by simply letting them know you have a listing on these networks.
Also, be sure to add links to your website listings, and add notations to your printed marketing materials that people can find you on Google+ and Yelp. Active users of these sites will be more likely to post reviews.