Google has a well-known monopoly on search engines. It is very useful when it comes to SEO and digital marketing in general. However, it is important that you aren’t just focusing on one search engine. There are a lot out there to be taken advantage of. Users could be searching with Bing or Yahoo!, and other options. It would be like leaving money on the table to not ensure all content is optimised.
If affiliate managers want to ensure traffic is driven to their sites, this is very important. Keep reading to see how you can diversify your online traffic. Use the opportunities offered by the various other popular search engines on the web.
Bing Search
Bing has a lot in common with Google Search but a lot fewer viewers. It has only a market share of 2.55% as of March 2020. But optimizing for Bing Search can allow for opportunities depending on your target audience and locations.
The Microsoft-produced and owned search engine is currently the second most used in the world. It offers slightly less competition since SEO resources tend to favour Google Search. Taking the time to take advantage of Bing using its webmaster tools or Bing/Microsoft ads is crucial to miss a not unsubstantial market.
A benefit of Bing is its use of valuable and relevant keywords to gain traffic and avoiding it will lead companies to miss valuable online traffic.
Yahoo! Search
The search engines we used before Google haven’t disappeared from the web. They keep going, in this case, sharing 1.66% of the market.
Working with Bing to facilitate their search results, Yahoo! Search generally shares the same benefits, since the users are combined, creating a great opportunity for traffic.
Amazon
Amazon is the place to go when searching for a product. Its reputation for holding anything and everything you can think of when shopping around has made it the first stop before you go out into the world to find what you’re looking for. And its impact is still growing.
Unlike other options on this list, searches to Amazon are guaranteed to have purchase intent behind them and therefore will create more sales conversions.
In turn, searches for products in other search engines like Google, will show Amazon products due to the high amount of people buying them.
Selling your products on Amazon will be an advantageous move if you are selling a product, rather than a service, but learning a little more about Amazon SEO would be useful.
Yandex
Yandex is the fifth biggest search engine in the world with a market share of 0.97%. It can offer more organic traffic from countries where it is more popular, like Russia and Turkey.
While Google is a big player and more prevalent, missing this opportunity to reach more eyes would be detrimental to your digital marketing strategy. Since it isn’t as big as Google, Yandex offers less competition but also less cost-per-clicks.
There are also other sites like Baidu, which has a market share of 72.73% in China. DuckDuckGo and Startpage protect users’ privacy. Swisscows is the family-friendly choice. Ecosia donate most of their profits to reforestation. Finally, SlideShare, which, as the name would suggest, share slides and other content.
Social search engines
Social media platforms don’t feature “influencers” for nothing. They tend to heavily influence search results based on an algorithm that tracks users’ behaviour, far more than search engines. They offer personalised searches that you can use to reach the users that are most likely to buy.
YouTube is the second most visited site in the world and the monopoly on video content. Using YouTube content in your marketing strategy will provide massive traffic to your product or service. However, this will require careful application of YouTube SEO strategies to stand out.
Pinterest is an image search engine that encourages engagement, which is vital to any online marketing strategy. Used by over 300 million monthly active viewers, it provides images to match a search query based on keywords and algorithms. It offers an opportunity to drive traffic to content created for other platforms and optimise clicks to your site.
More than any search engine combined, Facebook and Instagram deal with search queries by offering marketers specific target audiences. Facebook Search is heavily influenced by user data, rather than location or keywords, so it tends to offer local search results. This means that optimising your Facebook search will likely gain you opportunities that others have missed.
Follow this guide to optimise your SEO marketing and gain more visibility. If you still need assistance, book a free call with a member of our team!
