Venturewide is offering search engine optimization for smaller site that can get you traffic but doesn't cost as much as what larger companies are charging. We have figured out some ways to get you good rankings but without you having to spend thousands of dollars a month.

With our system we start with good research on keywords for your site and then we implement them on your site. We do a variety of technical things to your site to help it be found by the major search engines. And then we maintain your site on a regular basis to increase your rankings, which increases your traffic from relevant visitors.

Look at the variety of services we offer small businesses.

I was reading an article about Google in Fast Company and it had the following quote, "...According to Hitwise, Google controls 59.2% of the search market, up fomr 45% a year ago: MSN's share is down to 5.5% and Yahoo's is 28.8%."

This tells you a couple things. One, Google is running away with the search game. They had a tremendous leap. And, two, if you get in good at Google and Yahoo! with your search results, you have almost 90% of the search market covered. Don't fall for the emails that tell you that you need to pay them a bunch of money to put you in a thousand directories. It's not worth it.

I've found a couple helpful pages recently I want to share with those trying to boost their ranking.

The first one helps you find how many incoming (or back links) a web site has on the various search directory. You can find it at http://www.freewebsubmission.com/link-popularity.html. This way you don't have to go to several sites to find your link popularity.

The other site I found shows some of the largest directories online that you can submit your site to. It's called The Strongest Links. It shows you what pages have high Google ranking, if there's a charge for it, and if a reciprocal link is required. I've just started using this site.

One bonus link I'm going to show you doesn't have anything to do with linking strategy, but could keep you from getting spam. If your email address is up on a page with being encoded, there's a good chance an automated spambot will come through and harvest your email address, making you vulnerable to being on a bunch of spam lists. If your email address is encoded then the spambots can't pick it up. I've using a page on Proles.net that puts your email address into code that you can paste into your page. It looks like a normal email address but it can't be picked up by the spambot. Thanks, Proles.

MSN has been indexing pages like crazy over the last couple months in preparation for overhauling their search engine. They've received their results from several sources over the last couple years but now are coming up with their own algorithm. They could be in the middle of a big battle including Google and Yahoo! So it would pay to make sure your web site is listing with MSN.

Yahoo! is gaining ground on Google and could pass them as the most popular search engine by early next year. When search technology was in its infancy, Yahoo! was the 500-pound Gorilla. Google is the big monkey now but Yahoo! and MSN are breathing down its hairy neck. Google seems to have a good group of people so I'm sure they'll know how to fight back. We'll see what happens in the coming months.