Masterlink Interactive Blog

Talk is dominated by Google when it comes to search engine optimization. It makes sense - even despite Bing’s recent surge in market share and Yahoo’s ability to stay in the game, Google still dominates the industry, responsible for almost 66 percent of all searches.

But Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL still matter (that remaining third makes up a hefty piece of the pie), and the logarithm that decides who’s king of the search engine mountain changes for each.

So do we optimize sites for each particular engine? Should you choose a specific search engine, and aim solely for rankings success there? Does one approach fit all?

Here’s how we look at it:

SEO matters in Dallas Internet marketing. Links matter. Keywords matter. Real-time and mobile-friendly web design and search elements increasingly matter, as search engines get better and better at giving you multiple ways to refine your queries. And so we’re following the SEO evolution as close as anyone, and are helping pioneer many of the techniques that are working across the industry.

But at Masterlink Interactive, we’re not obsessed with SEO gimmicks. Instead, we build smart, customized, diverse, dynamic sites that embody sound SEO fundamentals and are still (much, much more importantly) inviting, attractive, and functional for your clients. And our results prove that building that way will pay off in search engine rankings as well. For all search engines, our approach is similar — we research your business, industry, competitors, and associated keywords, and then craft a customized SEO plan for your business that attracts a new base of online customers.

Our sites are the kind that attract links organically (because they’re actually worth sharing). We recommend blogs that we keep your site fresh, linked-to, and full of long-tail keywords. And we understand that SEO is just one aspect of a comprehensive interactive marketing strategy that we’ll help you employ.

Sure, there are a bag full of search engine-specific tricks and tweaks we’ll tailor your site around to keep it ranking high. But the sites we build succeed across the search engine spectrum, and are backed by the in-touch, savvy service needed to keep up with the ever-evolving SEO landscape.

The Apple “It’s Only Rock n Roll” Event happened with Steve Jobs appearing in public the first time this year. With the fan-fare came the expected release of the new iPod, iPhone, and iTunes releases. In the interest of full disclosure, I am an owner of the new 3Gs. With Obama being a Blackberry customer, the smart phone revolution is in full swing!

I can never avoid the temptation to go see how each of the searches engines fare in comparison to new news. The first thing I look at is the displayed text on the search results page to see if there are any relevant terms. After which I click on some of the links to see if I gain anything of use. Using the keyword “iTunes” in this case would theoretically contain relevant terms such as “iTunes 9” or possibly “iPhone OS 3.1”. The next thing I look for are the dates to see how fresh the content is. This may require me clicking into the link to check, as well. The third thing I look at is the layout combined with the variety of relevant items. The last one seems to be superfluous, but in all honesty, who really wants to see a single, vertical column of nothing but Wikipedia links?

I always start with Ask.com. Jeeves may have left (but he’s back in the UK!), but I think many of us remember AskJeeves fondly. Besides, as far as traffic goes, Ask is still competitive with Bing.com. Either way, it quickly becomes clear why Ask is no longer considered a “major” search engine.

The term “iTunes” returned a somewhat barren, but clean results page. Each of the links had a “binoculars” icon that allowed a mouse-over preview of the link. Without the “binoculars” I would have been discouraged as the only relevant terms discussed were iTunes 8, which sounds like slow indexing to me.

There was an image mid-way down the page with a couple relevant-looking links. I clicked on both of them and realized they were forum pages for their Q&A (beta) tab. A few of the links on the main search result page did wind up discussing iTunes 9, the iPhone. They were scant on details and they did not include the latest relevant terms. Most of the links were a month or two old.

What I did like is being able to find the listings of numerous songs provided in iTunes along with easily accessible iTunes download pages. The “binoculars” icon is a nice feature. The Q&A Tab could grow into something more like Yahoo Answers over time.

Unfortunately, I find Ask slipping faster and further behind in the search race. Next week I’ll see how Bing stacks up in comparison.