It’s becoming increasingly more important to branch out from Google and start to take advantage of the online advertising benefits offered by other search engines. Unfortunately for many sites- such as  Search engines such as this official website for Icon Property- Google SERPs offer a great deal of publicity but Bing and Yahoo use other factors for which the site in question has not yet been optimized. Bing and Yahoo have been gradually eating into Google’s control of the market, and it is likely that Bing will enjoy an even higher percentage of search traffic in 2014 than it enjoyed in previous years.

In the United States, the Bing search engine was responsible for almost 20 percent of all search engine queries in the month of April this past year. That’s quite a significant portion of search, and one should consider that statistic in combination with the fact that optimizing for Bing is less competitive and easier for many SEOs.

The advantages of Bing

Not only has Bing been handling a great deal of search in the last year, but it is also responsible for many search features carried out by nontraditional search engines like Facebook. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook handles some 1 billion search queries each and every day, and the social media giant relies on Bing for assistance with many of these queries.

It’s clear that optimizing for Bing can be profitable for many websites, and Bing seems to use many of the same parameters that Google uses in its own algorithm. For example, both Bing and Google look for high quality content, inbound website links, and websites with quick loading times.

Bing’s differences

However, Bing is known to place more emphasis on social media factors in producing its SERPs. Bing has pointed out the value social media presence has for webmasters hoping to come up in its searches and encourages social sharing for those who are hoping to rank higher. While link building is important for both search engines, but Bing offers its own Webmaster Guidelines that outline the particulars of its policies on what are helpful links. Those attempting to optimize for Bing should avoid reciprocal linking and posting links on spammy sites.

The best resource for information for those looking to optimize for Bing can be found using Bing Webmaster Tools. This resource can help webmasters in many different website development tasks, including creating site maps, disavow links, targeting a specific geographical region, and more.

Expected changes in the coming year

It’s difficult to predict what will happen in the near future in the rapidly changing world of search. Most likely, SEOs using diverse tactics and keeping their sites in good standing with several different search engines will have the most success in the coming months.

Are you constantly unhappy to wake up on a Monday morning? Being unhappy with your work can really drag down your whole life and keep you from achieving your full potential.

You might even like your job but don’t feel like your current placement is giving you the best that you could achieve.

If all this sounds really familiar to you then you should really consider becoming a freelancer. Here are five of the most compelling reasons why you should become a freelancer.

1. To Realise Your Full Potential

If you are a very creative and innovative person then you might feel like the boundaries of companies are holding you back.

Working as part of a large organisation doesn’t always allow you to do things exactly the way you want and this can be really frustrating.

If you become a freelancer you can really create and innovate freely. Because you are the person who selects the jobs you are more able to do things exactly the way you want to. You can really put your full potentials to use.

2. To Improve Your Earnings

Being a freelancer also provides you the ability to really control your finances. If you feel like your sector doesn’t provide a lot of potential for increasing your earnings you can really change this by becoming a freelancer.

Since you are able to select the jobs you do and the amount of work you do, you can really enhance your earning potential.

3. To Find New Career Opportunities

Freelancing can really open up a lot of doors for you in terms of career opportunities and this is really exciting. Naturally, you need to work your way up but once you establish your name in the field you can find a lot more different work opportunities.

Networking can open up doors that you didn’t even consider existed before.

4. To Control The Amount Of Work You Get

You really don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to work hours or the amount of work you need to do when you work as part of a company. If you don’t agree with the terms they suggest then there are plenty of people that can take your place. This can be very stressful and result in unhappiness.

But as a freelancer you can, to some extent, really think about how much you work and when you want to work. This can reduce your stress and ensure you aren’t under too much pressure at all times.

5. To Have The Ability To Work From Home

Naturally, for many the best reason of becoming a freelancer is the option to work from home. Perhaps you want to spend more time with the family and saving time from travelling between your house and the workplace can really be a big change.

There are so many benefits to working from home and it can actually be a lot more productive than working at an office. The key to ensuring your freelancing gets to a good start is all about making the work environment productive.

There are plenty of good tips for doing this at the Suitcase Entrepreneur article on the subject.

Featured images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source

Kelly is really interested in providing freelancers tips for making the most out of their careers. She is also really interested in finances and is always looking for new accountants working within the UK.

A pay per click company needs to be extremely careful when approaching match types and bidding strategy. Getting it right is absolutely necessary for giving your new account the right start. If done properly, the combination can get more and more relevant and quality traffic to your website. So, if you want to get the best performance, you need to make sure your PPC company utilizes a tiered bidding strategy.

Match types and tiered bidding strategy

Let us begin by looking at the things we want each of the match types to cover and the essential role they play in advertising.

Exact match

With these match types, SEM managers can target particular queries as well as users with a particular ad text. If you use a granular account structure, your ad text can match up directly with what a searcher is looking for. A quality score is achieved when the ad text,  search query and the landing page match up exactly.

In case of a tiered bidding approach, exact match is considered to be the most useful match type.

Phrase match

With this match type, you can support the keywords you haven’t covered in exact match. If you use this properly, you can target long-tail search strings, while still displaying relevant advertisements.

It is necessary to include your phrase match keywords and “route” keyword phrases in order to set up a proper tiered bidding strategy. Suppose you are a seller of shoes; then, you would be benefited by having the following keywords on phrase match: Brown Woodland Shoes; Black Woodland Shoes; Green Woodland Shoes etc.

You may not be having a search query that says “size 12 brown Woodland shoes” but you will still have a relevant advertisement to come up with. Again, it should be said that relevant ads and landing pages together make better quality scores and lower CPCs.

Broad and Broad Match Modified

Despite being the gravest enemy of an SEM manager and Google’s moneymaker, this match is used sparingly by a professional pay per click company but does give unique, long-tail search strings. According to Google, more than 25% of its users use unique search strings that have never been searched for before; so it is quite impossible to cover each and every query with exact match.

Broad match can be used for catching all the long tail search queries that do not match the phrase or exact match keywords.

Tiered bidding

If you want to implement the tiered bidding section of this strategy, you will have to lower your bid on the basis of match types. For instance, exact match: $12; phrase match: $10; BMM: $9

Ideally, if your account structure has been set properly, the exact match keyword should be having the highest quality score. With tightly themed ad-groups and campaigns and highly relevant advertisements and landing pages, this is likely to be the case.

Phrase should ideally follow suit on the basis of the same theory, but you may be having a slight decrease in quality score due to lesser relevancy for certain search strings or a decrease in the CTR or click-through-rate due to the display of not-so-relevant queries.

Google says that quality score is calculated for each of the search strings, so you will need to monitor queries and match types. Once you get yourself enough historical data, fluctuation in quality score is likely to slow down to a great extent.

With this bidding approach, you can have your exact match type keywords displayed for the users. Broad and phrase support exact match get you terms that have not been added as an exact keyword. Broach match or broad match modified helps you get the new queries that users are looking for, that were not there in your original build.

Run Search Query Reports

To ensure the success of this strategy, you will need to go on adding new search strings that are being caught by broad match and phrase keywords. You should run search query reports on a weekly or biweekly basis and make sure you go on adding new search strings that are more frequently used as exact match keywords. Implementing this strategy may not be easy, but it will definitely provide you with greater ROI.

Your pay per click company can surely go on with bid optimization, but tiered strategy may be tried, as that gets you greater number of search strings to the best match type and displays the right advertisement.

Google+ Local is one of the best places to promote your business online. When you create a business page on G+ local not only your business gets listed on the Google Maps, but your company’s SERP ranking improves significantly. These days, people search for everything in social media sites and thus, it is crucial to have a corporate page on G+ Local. For example, when food lovers search for “Italian restaurants in New York”, Google+ provides them the details of several restaurants serving Italian dishes in that city. Thanks to G+ Local, if the customers search on Google directly, they get a list of restaurants with direction and other details immediately. If you have not listed your company in Google+ Local yet, you can hire a SEO company in India for the job and they will enlist the brand name on your behalf.

The search engine giant has some strict rules and regulations regarding Local listings and if you make any mistakes, then not only your page can get demoted, but it can be removed from G+ Local completely. Let’s take a look at some of the common mistakes and how you can avoid them.

Keyword stuffing: It happens when you put keywords in the fields that are not supposed to feature keywords. For instance, suppose your company name is “ABC Technologies”, but instead of writing just the company’s name you write “ABC Technologies, offering web design and web development solutions in Los Angels” as your brand name in the profile. All the words beyond “ABC Technologies” will be considered as keyword stuffing by Google. Unfortunately, even some of the seasoned SEO professionals make this mistake. Therefore, while hiring the professional SEO company, make sure that they are well versed in Local guidelines. When filling the category field, mention what your business is not what it does. For example, ABC Technologies is “IT solutions”, not “web design and development company”.

Inconsistency in information: Google relies on directory websites and public information to check whether your business is genuine or not. Google wants to provide authentic information to users because Local is all about accuracy. It is of no use if someone searches for Hospitals in LA and the SERP shows him hospitals located in San Francisco. Therefore, you must provide the same address in every business directory, otherwise Google will smell something fishy. For example, if you have posted “25 Times Square” in one directory and in the G+ Local page “Times Square. Building number 25”, Google can eliminate your information.

Using 1800 number: In order to verify the location of a company one of the primary things that Google check is the area code provided in your phone number. So, if you give an 1800 number as your contact number, the search engine giant won’t be able to verify your address. Therefore, use a number that displays the area code and make sure that it is posted across all the other business directories.

Not adding pictures and videos: It is very important to fill up all the details about your business. Address and phone number is necessary, but so are the pictures and videos about your business. There is no need to upload studio quality photos, but you should give some pictures to assure that web users that you have an establishment. The pictures can be complied as an animated slide-show and uploaded as well. You can include any picture that is relevant for the target audience. For example, an IT company can show the pictures of office and employees. A restaurant can show the interior decoration and a snap of the menu so that people can check the pricing of dishes.

Writing fake reviews: Never fill your corporate page with fake listings. If you try to do it, the search engine giant will detect the fraudulent behavior and penalize your page. In case customers are not writing reviews, you can encourage your most loyal clients to write a few good words about your business. You can also ask your employees to log-in using their own account and write some good reviews.

So, now you are aware of the most common mistakes. If you hire an SEO company in India for business listing in Google+, then they will take care of everything, but if you are planning to do it on your own, then don’t commit the aforementioned blunders.

In today’s economy, money can be tough to come by, even if it means investing in your dream business. Fortunately, you don’t need to let economic factors out of your control and rain on your parade. When you start your business, you do not have to go all out in a sense of going bankrupt or worse, relying on investors and credit. There are easy and powerful ways for you to keep your costs down while starting a business. We have found four easy ways for you to follow. Keep reading to learn the basics on how you can bootstrap a business.

Be a Minimalist

You may think part of the fun of starting a business lies in some of the equipment and supplies that goes along with it. It’s okay to relish in the idea that you’ll get to pick out numerous pieces of furniture and technology that will give your business a personality all its own.

But if you’re on a strict budget, then you simply need to put this luxury off for now. At the moment, you must focus on only purchasing the necessities. You’ll enjoy acquiring all the other necessities more after your business becomes a success and later on when you’ve earned the budget necessary to purchase them.

Consider a Partner

One reason you may find yourself taking the bootstrap route is because you’re going at it alone. Doing so might give you the control you yearn for, but it might also be keeping your company from starting off on the right foot. You can easily solve this problem by taking on a partner.

So you don’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fryer, be sure you do your due diligence when looking for a partner. Find one who mirrors your vision and drive and taking one on might be the best decision you make.

Apply for a Grant

Many state governments as well as private organizations make small business grants available for those wishing to take part in the dream of starting their own company. Any one of them could provide just the capital you need to get your business off the ground and walking in the right direction.

Don’t be fooled, however. It’s not free money. You’ll need to do your research in order to find a grant you’re eligible for and then all the work that comes with applying.

Turn to Crowdfunding

Modernity has helped make starting your own business easier in a number of ways. One such way would be crowdfunding. It’s the simple process of asking the general public to donate money in order to help you get your company started. The best part is this money comes with no-strings attached and you’ll never have to repay it.

Although you’ve probably dreamt about your own business for years, you might have to put off that exact version if you’re strapped for cash at the moment. Follow the above advice, however, and you can still start a great company on budget.

This post is from serial entrepeneur Issa Asad who has founded various successful technology companies.