In the first part of our two-part guide to staying alive in 2004, we talked about understanding keywords and the major avenues to be aware of for getting into search engines. This issue we focus the light more closely on the biggest search engines you need to know about, their position in the market and how you can use the knowledge you have for each of them."
To succeed with natural search engine marketing at Google, marketers need to focus on creating and maintaining content rich websites that people will link to naturally. Building and continually enriching a quality site should be your biggest focus. Paid placement should only be on your to-do list if your site is good at converting visitors and you’re a good copywriter who can deliver good click through rates for your ads. Remember, you need to know the keywords that you are buying are going to produce tangible results. If you're just guessing, you're going to waste money and have plenty of questions later.
Yahoo - all about to change..
2004 is MSN's beta year for search. Their web crawler, in-house index and search toolbar are all in beta at the present. MSN is finally gearing up to come in line with mother Microsoft closer than ever before. Bill Gates is beginning to talk about search as a concept the way he did about browsing the Web before Internet Explorer was released.
Yahoo and Google will feel the heat once the sun at Microsoft shines fully upon them. Until then, MSN will spend most of 2004 basking in the profits from their deals with Overture for paid placement results, and Inktomi for their web results. Expect to hear more from Microsoft towards the end of the year when some of their investments in proprietary technologies begin to take shape and their vision for search integration is better defined.
These three search properties represent over 85-90% of all people searching and so they warrant the majority of your attention. But there are other search networks available that can produce traffic and additional exposure above and beyond the Big Three. We'll use a future report to give you information about some of the smaller companies in the search market like Ask Jeeves, FindWhat, LookSmart, Infospace, Enhance (formerly Ah-Ha) and others that you need to know about and understand.
posted by Jen @ 11:52 AM
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