Google is still the most popular search engine out there, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down. It’s important to know how to get on the right track with your SEO for Google. It is also important, however, to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there and that Yahoo! is also a highly rated search engine which actually has more pop culture usage.

Before you can truly understand Google you must understand a little bit of the history behind Google. In the beginning, Google was considered by many to be the “Geek’s Search Engine.” This changed as Google started delivering better and better results

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By: Adam McFarland | Source: site-reference.com

Just because you have a new site, it doesn’t mean you have to wait months to start getting some traffic. Most site owners are so focused on search engine traffic that they neglect other sources of traffic that can pay dividends immediately and help their search engine rankings in the future. Below are five ways that you can bring quality traffic to your site today that won’t cost you a penny:

Write an Article

You don’t need to be a professional writer to write a quality article. If you’ve got a site, you likely have knowledge in a subject related to your site that people will find value in. Spend some time brainstorming topics and then choose one or two that you think people will find interesting. A good article takes time to write so make sure you take ample time to research and proofread.

Start Social Bookmarking

del.icio.us, digg, Furl, and StumbleUpon are all highly visited social bookmarking sites where users “bookmark” web pages that they enjoy to share with others. Sign up for an account and start bookmarking your site, blog, articles that you write, and any page that links back to your site that you think others will find value in. The power of social bookmarking sites is unreal – the more people bookmark your site, the more users see it, and pretty soon you can find a link to your site on the homepage generating thousands of visitors!

Join Social Networks

Creating a profile and interacting with other users on social networks like LinkedIn, Ryze, and MySpace can do wonders for your business. LinkedIn and Ryze are great for connecting with other business owners, but MySpace presents the largest opportunity to drive a substantial amount of traffic to your site.

Learn more at site-reference.com

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Source: searchenginejournal.com

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

There has been some cross blogging back and forth between Rohit, Cameron, and Jeremiah Owyang on the rules of Social Media Optimization, and I’ll add a couple more.

Here’s a summary of what they’ve put together to date:

1. Increase your linkability : Think blogs, content, aggregation & linkbait.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy : Include calls to action for users to tag, bookmark and Digg your stuff. I’d suggest the Sociable Plugin if you have a Wordpress powered blog.

3. Reward inbound links : List blogs which link back to you via permalinks, trackbacks or recently linking blogs (like the Yahoo & Google blogs do).

4. Help your content travel : Content diversification can lead to mobility of your content beyond the browser.

5. Encourage the mashup : Let others use your content or tools to produce something a bit different or outside of the box with your stuff, even RSS.

Read full article at searchenginejournal.com

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