While many things have changed in the SEO world in recent years, one thing that hasn’t is the predominant position of Google in the search engine world. It’s maintained its hold on roughly two-thirds of the search engine market share, while Bing continues to make incremental progress but lags far behind.  Because of this, it’s natural that Google is the primary focus of almost all SEO activities.

But will this always be the case? It’s easy to forget that it was fairly recently that Google was the upstart in the search engine field, going up against established rivals such as AOL and Lycos. With Google recently choosing to keep its keyword data private to the public but share it with advertisers, some experts are wondering if Google is primed to lose some of its market share to Bing.

One thing is clear: Google and Bing approach search in different ways. Google is clearly focused on attempting to decipher what users really want to find and predicting this before a search is made. Bing takes the opposite approach and uses data from its deep ties with social media sites to determine what is most important to web users.

Mobile searches continue to gain in popularity as more people are using their smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices as primary means of surfing the Internet. Microsoft has already invested heavily in mobile; in addition, their connections with social sites such as Facebook mesh with the habits of users to use their mobile devices to check their social media profiles.

Google has been taking big chances recently by beginning to completely rethink how it handles search results. This includes implementing its Knowledge Graph in 2012. While Google hopes that this will eventually revolutionize the way that people search for information online, it also might provide competitors like Bing with a chance to capitalize and gain additional market share. Google is going to be the main search engine for the foreseeable future, but other search engines like Bing are likely to continue to gain market share in the months and years to come.

The rules of search engine optimization have changed dramatically in the last few years. Google responded to the glut of low-quality content with Panda and Penguin, algorithm updates that placed an emphasis on quality content and organic search engine optimization rather than keyword-stuffed articles and manipulating site code.

The most important thing to think about when creating an SEO strategy for your website is the visitor experience. This wasn’t always the case; until recently, Google wasn’t concerned about the user experience when determining site rankings. This has changed, as Google is smarter about reviewing sites in a way that mimics how users interact with the site. In short, the best way to improve your link popularity is to have a website that provides useful content and information to visitors.

Adapting to the new SEO landscape means rethinking old tactics that were considered to be the industry standard just a few years ago. Here are four examples of how SEO strategies have shifted recently:

Build Blog Relationships Instead of Buying Links

While Google still places a high value on having your site linked on other sites, the concept of “buying” a high volume of  low quality links via a link network is no longer considered to be a good SEO strategy. In fact, if done incorrectly, you might get punished by Google for this. Instead, you should focus on doing outreach to blogs that are a natural fit for your site. Reach out to them and try to enter into a mutual relationship where you provide their readers with interesting content in exchange for links.

Focus on the On-Screen Design of Your Website

It’s still important to have a website that has a common sense architecture and that has a solid internal structure. But it’s now just as important to have a site that looks great and has content that flows naturally. Google’s spiders can read sites to analyze where and how content is displayed and you need to have a website design that takes advantage of this.

Expand Beyond a Limited Set of Keywords

Until recently, the prevailing method that search engine optimization consulting services used to increase a site’s page ranking was to focus on a limited amount of keywords and use them in the page content, title tags and header tags. Google is now smarter about how it evaluates keywords for rankings. It’s better to come up with keyword groups of related words and use them organically in your on-site content.

Concentrate on Branding

Google frowns on paying for anchor links on unrelated sites. Instead, it wants to see your company’s brand have strength. If this occurs, the power of your brand will give an extra boost to your related page rankings.

One of the most overlooked elements of any search marketing campaign is identifying the correct audience. Most people understand this when it comes to doing basic demographic research and targeting a campaign to hit customers’ particular interests. But many people don’t realize that this also extends to online advertising services and search engines. In fact, which search engine you are advertising on can significantly impact how you want to market and which customers you have the potential to reach.

It’s natural for companies to focus on Google as their search engine of choice when they want to drive higher ROI. After all, Google has the lion’s share of the Internet search market. According to recent comScore data, Google sites make up around two-thirds of the total market share in the Internet search world. Certainly, any online marketing campaign should include Google as one of the key points of focus.

But doing research beyond the market share numbers shows that it’s also important to focus on Google’s competitors such as Bing and Yahoo. One reason for this is because of exclusivity. Some people make the assumption that web searchers will go back and forth between one search engine and another to get the best results. The truth is that most web users find one search engine and stick with it. For example, 73 percent of people who perform searchers in the travel category of the Yahoo Bing network use that network exclusively. This means that the only way to reach these 12 million searchers in the United States is through Google and Bing ads.

In addition, considering other search engines allows you to tap into the potential buying power of web searchers. In December 2012, comScore published the Audience Buying Power Index, which went into detail about the potential buying power of consumers using different search engines. The results were surprising:

• Searchers on the Yahoo Bing network spent eight percent more than Google searchers on average
• The 47 million unique searchers who exclusively use Bing and Yahoo! in the US spend an average of 30 percent more than the exclusive Google searcher.

As you can see, there are definite reasons to consider advertising on the Yahoo Bing network ahead of Google. You’ll need to do the research to determine which combination works for you, and you’ll need to consider your target audience when doing this research.