Yahoo and Bing are consistently sending more highly targeted organic search traffic to my startup than Google. How is this possible?

Google dominates the search market, with about 66% of US traffic - clearly a far greater percentage of search traffic than all of the other search engines combined.

So if Google has the lion's share of the search market, why are Yahoo and Bing sending my startup, design-a-webpage.com, qualified organic search traffic for the SEO keywords and phrases that are targeted by the site? The answer could be part of a strategy to claw their way back.

Let's take a look...

Getting great PR for your small business startup in the media, on social media websites and blogs is crucial to driving enough business to keep you afloat. There are a range of skills and techniques you must learn in order to use your marketing and PR resources with maximum efficiency.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs tend to have limited budgets to spend on marketing campaigns, so it's important to identify those areas that are most likely to bear fruit early on. In particular, efforts that create lasting and cumulative benefits such as blogging (for on-site SEO, organic search traffic, authority and PageRank) and building up social contacts (off-site SEO, marketing, business contacts) are important.

So you've had a brainwave and implemented your idea. You now have a product that you know everyone is going to love, if only they knew about it...

It's about at this point where many startups begin to experience problems. It seems like no-one is interested enough to take a few minutes to look over your website and mention it on their blog. Sound familiar?

The good news is that if you haven't managed to get anyone interested in your product or service, then the problem is more than likely in your PR pitch. It's not yet time to begin second guessing your business.

Everyone starting their own site or blog tends to think that their online enterprise is unique. The truth of the matter is that whether or not the idea behind the new site or blog is unique or not, there are certain important features that every website needs in order to succeed.

Regardless of whether you are planning to sell cupcakes, or whether you want to try your hand at affiliate marketing, or simply want to share your thoughts in an online journal, you can benefit from making the right choices about the tools and technologies you use, right from the start.

Startups, entrepreneurs and, more often than not, established businesses often miss out on potential profits and additional revenue due to lack of proper competitive analysis.

Competitive analysis looks at what everyone else is doing, and how they do it - not the same as market research, which concentrates on who will potentially want your product, content, or services.

Unlike traditional businesses, which often have structure imposed on them by the financial entities that finance it, starting a business online often requires nothing more than an idea and a website or blog. You don't have to write a business plan because you don't need finance to start blogging, set up affiliate relations, and so on.

The barrier to entry into the online market is much lower than traditional businesses, which is great. But, it's a double edge sword because the easier it is to do something, the more people try it out. This means that you have to work harder at distinguishing yourself from the melee of other startups out there - because, believe me, there are a lot.

Entrepreneurs, small business owners and startups can all make a powerful contribution to their website's SEO (Search engine optimization) with one easy, but ingenious, change to their business' brand. You don't even have to be an SEO expert to implement it, although a familiarity with keyword research will help a bit.

To start with, you are going to need to have the Google Keyword tool handy, so make sure you can access that and that you know roughly how to use it.

Building a startup is a multi-disciplinary challenge that can stretch even the most competent people to the limit. Often, taking on the burden of learning a host of non-core business functions such as development, hosting, IT, SEO and Internet marketing can divert important resources away from activities that are crucial during the early phases of a business.

Admittedly Internet marketing is something that is crucial in the early phases of a business (or any phase of a business), but it's something that requires a bit of knowledge and experience and it takes time and effort to build this up. This time and effort could be better spent building important business contacts, looking after existing clients and making business deals.

I recently did an online consultation for a client who wanted to learn more about internet marketing and how to apply it in the real world. It occured to me that you might find it useful to glance over the main points of this internet marketing consultation (although there is a full transcript available at "Real life transcript of an Internet marketing consult for a small business").

What makes this marketing consultation interesting is that it looks at the process of building traffic and business online from both the perspective of the marketer and the startup/small business owner.

One of the toughest things about starting a new small or medium sized business, especially an online startup, is that it can be disheartening to go days, weeks or months without any action - conversions or new customers. This can serously affect cash flow, not to mention morale.

At times like this, it's easy to give way to worry - "How am I going to cover the payroll? Will the lights go out?", and so on. But this is when it most important to put your head down and get on with productive work. After all, problems are things you see when your eyes aren't on the prize... I know, I know; easier said than done!