The Com Scores* are out and the findings show Google is still the top search engine with 65% of all searches.   This is up .5% from the Summer 2009 report and after some traffic previously included is no longer part of the totals. This means they are actually stronger even though the report shows Google stayed the same at 65%.  Yahoo still at #2 position with 20% of search traffic has fallen to 16.9% losing ground to Microsoft at #3.   Ask and AOL follow with under 4% of the market.   Should you dismiss AOL in your search engine marketing efforts?  Not if US traffic is important.  Many loyal, long time AOL users rely on the portal service which also includes “enhanced” Google results.  

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not included in the core search numbers.
** Due to a change in the URL structure for certain Google News & Video searches, a portion of searches previously counted were excluded. comScore estimates that these searches were responsible for a reduction in Google’s Core Search share of approximately 10 basis points or 0.1%

Is getting search engine optimization in 2010 what a small business should do? Will it really help get more customers? Is it effective at finding localized consumers?

The answer to all of these questions is Yes. The market is still down, lucky it is recovering but companies out there are still struggling to stay afloat. DFW companies have to make difficult decisions every month as far as advertising and promotional needs to keep them either selling product or service. And this is precisely the reason that this year SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important. Search engine optimization provided by companies like 1 Call Service offer other companies a way to increase viable leads at a reduced cost compared to other forms of traditional advertising. A company that has more viable traffic is likely to make more sales as more arrive at the site because they found what they where looking for.

An example could be if you’re looking for a local lawn service, so you do a search and see what comes up. The higher you are on this list the most likely you are to gain the traffic. If your site is the one they end up on then you may have just made a sale.

The Dallas metroplex map and surrounding areas represent a large advertising market spread out over several hundred miles. So how can SEO/SEM (Search Engine Marketing)help narrow the field if you are just looking for local customers? SEO/SEM experts all across the county know about the important of localized services and searches, all of your major search engines are also now local aware. These experts can tap the potential of these search engine getting you the local results your looking for, be it a specific area such as Carrollton, or Plano, or a wider range such as Dallas or Ft. Worth.

1 Call Service SEO/SEM professionals will detail out your starting point, and formulate a custom list of improvements to be done to your website, along with getting information on what your specific SEM goals are. With this they can go to work and soon you can start to see your results. More calls, more walk ins, more product off the shelves, what ever your business needs are; money spent on SEO is money well spent in 2010.

Search engine optimization has become the weapon of choice for small companies to compete.

Traffic is shifting to the web

SEO for short, is what people search for along with SEM which is short for Search Engine Marketing.  One would think that traditional advertising is dead but that is far from true.

Mail, email and websites are all viable methods of marketing. To twitter or not is not the question. The fundamentals are much lower than the high level question of precisely where to market.   DFW marketing recently came across a company providing search engine marketing with a single focus of buying links called linkbacks and they never even see the stats of the website they are promoting instead relying only on the link tracking of the service they use to buy the back links. Fortunately we educated them to some basics and they will be more successful as a result.

Tip Time: If you signed up for SEO or SEM and the marketing company has not asked for access to your stats fire them right now! Do not waste another dollar or try to educate them because they should be educating you.

Tip Time: Before you signed an agreement was a specific measurable goal discussed? Something to think about..

If there is any doubt as to the difficulty of how to reach the top of the search engines consider that there area almost 70,000,000 domains in the United States.

So should you buy one of the other top level domains instead if the .com you want is taken?  Since there are only 7 million .net domains there is a good chance you could find your magic gem is available as a .net.  Some would say you need to get a .mobi or .us or .cc but in general sticking with the top internationally known domains is the best choice.  Getting an obscure domain name from a small island in the pacific also means many ISP’s may not even accept email from you.  This is an important consideration when picking a domain name.

We have a good pulse on the domain market and work with a variety of agencies.  Find a good Internet consultant and discuss your business and market then start registering and developing the name(s) that will help you meet your Internet marketing goals.  Go to market with a solid strategy that the professionals will help you achieve.

Source Ref: directi.com

We all love Google for the good they bring, the summers of code and other great projects they helped move forward.  They have some good tools and here are a few tools that can be used by the average business owner without needing a PHD in computer terminology.  We purposely will not look at the adwords, adcenter or any tool that requires a login or account before you can use the tool.  Everything listed here is free for use and not to difficult.

First up is trends.  What are the search trends for your industry, product or service?   Hop right over to Google Trends and start searching.   www.google.com/trends You can combine multiple search terms with commas and see how they compare.

Put competing companies up on the search as this can be very informative.  If you are a stock trader this is a fantastic tool and gives you a view not seen by the standard stocastics tools for stock picks.  The view compares several years so you get a big picture view including major news and associated search peaks.   Look up your search data and think about the low spots.  Did you spot a trend?  What can you do to help your business avoid any valley shown in the metric results?

MSN offers several tools in the question of search relevance and search value.  Keyword search group is a tool to help you with related terms for your search.  Our tests honestly did not reveal much and pretty much only worked with single words not phrases.

 Try out the keyword funnel tool.  It means keyword not key phrase.  Type in 2 a word phrase and don’t expect to get results.  Single keywords work well unless you sell something like windows where obvious conflicts between software and actual windows come into play.

The MSN keyword mispelling tool is very weak.  It will catch a few but we know from actual web logs the results from the tool are just not very thorough.  There is value in how easy it is but we wanted more from the search results.

The MSN keyword forcasting tool is nice, has good metrics and gives an interesting view of search consolidation for multiple terms.  Be sure to click the “text” link shown below for a numeric view of the results.  We like numbers!!

Here is a link to all the MSN tools so you can do some quick data mining. MSN Free Search Tools.

There are many additional tools and search professionals available.  Find someone you can talk to in your own timezone and armed with some information from the search tools above you will really help your SEO company take you to the next level.  You can do a lot yourself but a professional will let you go run your business while helping achive your online search goals.
Sponsor: Dallas ISP