We live in a world where all human knowledge is available at our fingertips. If you want to find out what "right-clicker mentality" means or who Aristotle was you simply…
Google it.
Wait, what? Let’s rewind the tape.
I was going to say that you “type your query into

6 Best Google Alternatives & Unbiased Search Engines

SEO seems like a fairly straightforward job, right?
You set up a website that is fast and mobile-friendly. Then, you create high-quality content to attract visitors. Finally, you collect backlinks to get more link juice and boost your positions.
Of course, the devil is in the details.
The longer you

19 SEO Tips I Wish I’d Known When I Was a Beginner

We live in a world where all human knowledge is available at our fingertips. If you want to find out what "right-clicker mentality" means or who Aristotle was you simply…

I was going to say that you “type your query into a search engine of your choice.” But googling something feels so natural and convenient, doesn’t it? It became synonymous with searching for information online. But is Google an unbiased search engine? Or the best search engine for doing academic research?

We surveyed almost 600 technology enthusiasts to find out:

Here is the list of good alternatives to Google for the impatient:

But the question of Google’s neutrality in itself deserves a deeper investigation.

You can xerox a document with a photocopier manufactured by a company other than Xerox, right? Let’s assume that you can also google something with search engines other than Google. 

Before we explore the best alternatives to Google, let’s find out what the fuss is all about.

We asked respondents to evaluate their level of satisfaction with the majority of search results offered by Google.

It turned out that Generation Z respondents are very happy with the results they get. Almost 95% of Zoomers think that “Google provides accurate and useful content—exactly what people may expect to get when they type in a specific search phrase.”

On the other end of the spectrum are respondents who identify themselves and their political views as “conservative.” Almost one in four of the self-proclaimed conservatives didn’t think that the top positions of Google result pages were accurate.

The majority of respondents do believe that Google is politically neutral. Offering results that are politically biased was one of the least common arguments for using an alternative search engine.

However, respondents who label themselves as conservative chose “political bias” as one of the main reasons for using a Google alternative. If we were to compare it with the rest of our sample group, conservatives mentioned “Google not being politically neutral” as the primary reason 15 times more often.

Is there a grain of truth in this? Does Google have a political agenda and ranks some content higher than others?

Let’s try to illustrate it with a quick experiment. We’ll compare some results from Google and a “non-liberal search engine.”

If we google “Andy Ngo,” the first result after his Wikipedia profile is an article by Rolling Stone: <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-ngo-right-wing-troll-antifa-877914/">How a Right-Wing Troll Managed to Manipulate the Mainstream Media</a>.

If we use an independent search engine, such as DuckDuckGo, the first results are Ngo’s Wikipedia page, official website, and some articles from NY Post and Fox News, with titles such as: <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/06/03/another-antifa-beating-wont-silence-truth-teller-andy-ngo/">Another Antifa Beating Won’t Silence Truth-Teller Andy Ngo</a>.

Which search engine is non-partisan? Is the person of interest a right-wing troll or a truth-teller?

Google uses PageRank—an algorithm created by Larry Page to measure the importance and authority of a website—to decide which articles get better positions.

In general, pages rank higher if they are optimized for search engines and mentioned as sources by other reputable pages. It is a kind of “authority score'' that is calculated on the basis of how many pages link to your website. You can find it out by using a <a href="https://seodity.com/backlink-checker">backlink checker tool</a>.

The article from the Rolling Stone has 1,305 backlinks coming from 243 websites, many of which have a page authority score within the range of 60-70 points.

By comparison, the article about Andy Ngo from the New York Post has been linked 107 times from 23 domains, mostly pages with a lower authority score. Many links to the NY Post article have a no-follow attribute or no anchor texts which makes Google more suspicious of the quality of the content linked.

Google itself does not sabotage right-wing content. It's just that their algorithm picks out information that is:

To evaluate and measure this, Google uses a range of signals. If an article is high, it is not due to a single factor. A “liberal” content is more likely to appear higher in search results provided by Google if the general media landscape, journalists, content creators, and readers are likely to find it useful. And, according to our survey results, it seems to work the way it was supposed to.

On the other hand, some may argue that the Google Personalized Search feature may create a filter bubble effect. However, this phenomenon is more prevalent in social media. If you want to make sure that you are not getting personalized search results, you can turn it off by adding an additional search parameter (psw=0) to your query. Or simply turn it off in your Google account settings.

You can read more about getting neutral results with Google in one of our articles with <a href="https://seodity.com/blog/seo-tips-from-experts/#11-always-double-check-the-serps">SEO tips about SERP analysis</a>.

Google is not biased. If anything, it does what it is supposed to do in a specific socio-political context. It simply doesn’t boost content produced by “truth-tellers” if it is not backed by any authoritative sources (which some may perceive as a lack of neutrality).

Nevertheless, our survey respondents have many other reasons for choosing an alternative search engine. So, what are the main problems that people may still have with Google?

What are the primary reasons for using alternatives to Google?

Although many think that Google is extremely useful and they are satisfied with services the company provides, they still have some major concerns about other aspects. Over 75% of respondents agreed that Google collects too much data that invades their privacy.

Main reasons for using alternative search engines:

Apparently, the most common reason for using alternative search engines is not related to Google being biased or unbiased.

Alternative search engine usage statistics

We all know that Google is one of the most important tech giants and holds the majority of the market. The four most popular search engines in the world today are:

You can check out more detailed <a href="https://99firms.com/blog/search-engine-statistics/">search engine statistics here</a>.

Interestingly, our respondents picked different options as their favorites. Here is a visualization of what they wrote:

Over half of them mentioned DuckDuckGo as an alternative search engine they know or use.

The most popular alternative search engines named in our survey were:

We find these results extremely interesting. Let’s take a closer look at each of the solutions.

Not all of these search engines are alternatives to Google in the literal meaning of the word. Some of them have better application in specific situations or are complementary tools. Some of our survey respondents agree that Google is the best choice, but it is good to consider other solutions as additions that put Google search results in a wider context.

DuckDuckGo is a browser that addresses the most common problem users have with Google—the privacy matter. Searches are private and no data about them is stored or tracked. Search results are frequently based more on user engagement than traditional SEO techniques. You can expect more results from diverse news outlets, which makes DuckDuckGo one of the so-called conservative search engines.

Bing can do the same thing as Google and offers a very similar user experience. We can search for content, images, or maps. You get featured snippets and extracted information from sites that answer your questions. Maybe not all features are as powerful, but some people think that Bing is better than Google because of its simplicity, fewer ads, and very convenient map features.

Ecosia is not actually an independent search engine. The results are all provided by Bing. In fact, what we are dealing with here is an interesting partnership between several entities for the noble purpose of protecting the environment. The more often you use Ecosia, the more trees you plant. This is a very good image maneuver to show a more friendly face of technology companies.

Brave is a whole system of interconnected technologies that aim to revolutionize the way we use the internet. It's a browser, search engine, cryptocurrency wallet, and much more. For using Brave you get cryptocurrency rewards, for example its Basic Attention Token (BAT) that is available on popular exchanges and easy to monetize. The search engine itself is still in the beta phase but we can expect some cool developments and further integration with the crypto market and interesting ad revenue models.

Google sometimes has problems with very technical queries. If you need something more scientific or related to mathematics and engineering, WolframAlpha can be a helpful solution. It is not described as a search engine, but some of our respondents mentioned that it is very useful as an alternative to Google for scientists.

Marginalia is a really interesting tool that will take you back in time. Instead of the results that are the most SEO friendly, you can expect to see some websites that belong in a museum. Although some of the links listed by Marginalie may look amateurish, it is a very interesting engine that often provides interesting and unexpected results. You can use it to add diversity to your research.

Sometimes to find exactly what you're looking for you don't have to change technology—just combine several solutions into one. Or use advanced options of Google. You may be surprised to find out how easy it is to access high quality content with the tools that you already know.

Below we present some simple tricks on how to get more accurate results when you are searching.

Try googling [your search query] + Reddit/Quora

Google displays content based on a fixed set of rules and measurable qualities. After reading a few tutorials on <a href="https://seodity.com/blog/how-to-do-keyword-research/">how to do keyword research for search engine optimization</a>, you will be able to create content that gets featured on the first page of Google.

This means that a perfect result usually has a specific number of words, uses certain predictable phrases, and has an acceptable, user-friendly format. It is usually written by a professional journalist or a blogger.

Websites that appear on the Google search result page are not created by independent contributors or “average” people. And they are not based on votes. They are produced by professional content creators, sometimes as part of their deliberate <a href="https://seodity.com/blog/what-is-content-marketing/">content marketing strategy</a>.

But there are many websites that use voting systems. For example, people ask questions on Reddit or Quora and then the most popular and useful answers are usually the one with the highest number of positive votes. The only drawback is that these portals do not have good internal search engines.

You can have the best of both worlds. The most powerful trick for searching user-generated content is to write your search query in Google and add “Reddit” or “Quora” at the end.

The most-voted answer will usually be more straight to the point and accurate. It will also be based on personal experiences rather than theory.

This technique is similar to the previous one. Instead of searching the entire Internet, you can direct Google to specific sources or exclude unwanted results. You can freely filter or modify several search criteria.

Writing your search query and specifying sites will help you compare different viewpoints on a given issue. Just perform multiple searches and specify sources with contrasting political profiles.

Try the full-text search features in Google Books and Archive.org

This technique is the opposite of the first approach. Instead of looking for more accessible content created by average Joe, you can narrow your search to things that have appeared in print. This usually implies good quality but may require a little more time and dedication.

People are looking for alternatives to Google for a variety of reasons. Some would like an independent, conservative search engine that returns more right-wing content. Others may care about their privacy and security. &nbsp;For some people news, SEO-friendly guides, and editorials are not enough because they need more technical information.

SEO seems like a fairly straightforward job, right?

You set up a website that is fast and mobile-friendly. Then, you create high-quality content to attract visitors. Finally, you collect backlinks to get more link juice and boost your positions.

The longer you are in the SEO game, the more patterns you discover.

Do you really have enough time to learn everything on your own from scratch?

We collected almost twenty best SEO tips from search engine optimization veterans.

Here is the list of things they wish they had known when they were starting out:

First-hand experience is extremely important. But why shouldn't you tap into the knowledge of seasoned SEO professionals?

1. Don’t expect traffic without doing your research first

I bet writing for SEO wasn't your childhood dream. No one thinks: "When I grow up, I will become an SEO copywriter."

Mostly we start out as bloggers or journalists. And before we discover search engine optimization tools, we simply want to write things that are interesting. And this tip from Hannah probably rings a bell or two:

"One thing I wish I knew when getting started with&nbsp;<a href="https://seodity.com/blog/what-is-content-marketing/">content marketing</a>&nbsp;and SEO was how to conduct keyword research. Before this, I was just writing loosely on a topic without aiming to rank for keywords. An example of this was some of my beginner blog posts that contained no keywords and got no traffic. As I gained more experience and knowledge, I learned how to use different digital marketing tools. From that point, I was able to figure out which ones would be best to rank for based on keyword difficulty and volume."

Normal writing is like playing cards. You never quite know what will turn out to be successful and you need a lot of luck to win. But SEO copywriting is more like a game of chess. Everything is out in the open and the results depend on your strategy.

If you want to check the volume and difficulty of a specific search phrase, there are many tools available. You can even try our own <a href="https://seodity.com/keyword-generator">free keyword generator</a>.

2. When choosing the type of content, make an informed decision

Keyword research alone will not give you all the answers to all the questions. The type of content you decide on is crucial.

"When googling your target keyword, check the top result. Is it a product page, a product review, a list article, or a “how-to” blog post? You’ll be able to find what type of content you need to create so you can rank on search engines. So many times we made the mistake of thinking about our own interests. For example, we created a product landing page because we know we have higher conversion rates with those. But the other results on Google were more or so blog posts."

It is a quite widespread practice to create landing pages where articles would be more appropriate. There is a huge difference between keywords such as best tools to check backlinks and <a href="https://seodity.com/backlink-checker">free backlink checker</a>.

3. Page speed alone is nothing without a good content strategy

This is another common SEO mistake. People who want to improve their position in Google think that a good web developer will be able to sort out all of their problems.

Focusing only on technical aspects of your site won’t get you anywhere. 

While Core Web Vitals and page speed are very important, they are only part of the solution.

"I used to be a consultant for a large furniture company with a very old web stack. After thousands of dollars spent on engineering time to optimize their site to the PageSpeed gold standard, we didn't see the growth in traffic—they promptly dropped us. Nowadays, I focus more on content strategy and proper keyword targeting as my means of growing traffic, as well as healthy white-hat backlinking campaigns."

Sometimes this can be a hard and expensive lesson for the client. But having good on-page SEO is like having a good ship. It won't do you much good without a good captain and a reliable crew to rely on. That’s why you need content marketing experts too.

4. Focus on your searchers’ intent and the best way to answer their query

The very essence of good search engine optimization is giving people exactly what they are searching for. They can formulate their queries in very different ways. But the searcher's intent behind the queries is what you should really be able to decipher.

"In all my years working in content marketing, I have consistently found, time and time again, the best performing content is content that thoroughly and accurately answers the reader's question. I recommend that any content marketer writing a piece of content think first, if I was reading this blog, ebook, or content offer, what would I want to know, and how would I want to read it?"

You should remember that it is a mistake to create several articles that address the same searcher's intent. For example, keywords such as how to generate backlinks and how to get backlinks don’t require separate pieces. You can google both variants and see for yourself that the results are the same.

5. Remember that web crawlers are our primary audience

Ultimately, the most important thing is to write for people and give them content that they find useful. That’s how you win the SEO-game long-term.

Your website will not be successful with readers if they never find it!

"If we want to reach people, we have to create for bots. SEO is the framework that helps us do that well. Creatives tend to be especially hostile to this idea. But in the 21st century, we reach the human audiences we need by giving web crawlers what they want. We write for web crawlers first (and directly) and we write for human beings second (and indirectly)."

This is a hard truth to swallow—but a truth nonetheless. Writing that is anecdotal and full of digressions is great for traditional journalism and editorials. But it doesn’t work with SEO! If we start our article about business ideas with a long allegory about dinosaurs, the bounce rate will go through the roof. And it won’t rank too well at all.

6. Use search engine optimization tools for identifying low-hanging fruit

There are two schools of SEO. According to one, you should not worry about keyword difficulty at all. Just create content that is relevant to your target market and be patient. The second approach tells you to mix things up and cover some easy queries with low keyword difficulty first.

"I wish I had discovered the power of proper keyword research sooner. Google can send you swarms of traffic for years. Keyword tools tell you monthly search volumes and whether you can beat the online competition for readership or not. Beginners should go after low-hanging fruit—keywords with a small number of monthly searches and low keyword difficulty."

Low keyword difficulty means that you can expect to rank high even if your domain has low authority and only a handful of backlinks. Tools like Seodity allow you to check the keyword difficulty (KD) of specific keywords.

7. Try SEM to validate if you can turn traffic into sales

Seasoned SEO professionals will tell you that website traffic is a vanity metric. It does not matter what kind of traffic you have. What matters is how many sales you've managed to generate with it.

"Take the time to analyze your marketing data! Creating content that is engaging and gripping is important, but if it content isn’t turning into sales, something is wrong. And you need to figure out what. Monitor the habits of your consumers through SEM before investing too much into organic SEO."

Before you start collecting backlinks AMD writing 200 blog articles, try a simple experiment. Write some articles and run Google Ads on them. Check your conversion rate. Try to estimate your potential sales based on your results and the volume of keywords that you hope to rank for. It should help you decide if SEO can be a good acquisition channel for your business.

8. Include answers to the People also ask questions in your article

When people are looking for information on how to open a restaurant, they usually have a lot of additional questions in the back of their minds. Where to get the products? How much will it cost to rent a place and hire cooks and waiters? Do I need a permit?

A good article will answer the main question. But a great article will anticipate and give answers to all the additional questions in order to cover the topic. You can use the People also ask suggestions from Google to make your pieces more comprehensive.

"Implement the people also ask snippets into your headings or as FAQs in the end. This helps boost your ranking for that particular keyword."

Here is an article on <a href="https://looka.com/blog/how-to-start-a-photography-business/">starting a photography business</a> by Enina. It covers all of the major questions that are related to the main query.

This technique is very easy to implement in your writing. And you can find out additional questions for free by using Google. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

9. Think about the structure of your headings

Everyone knows that you have to put keywords in your headings. You should try to use different variants of keywords related to your searcher's intent. But there is something that many budding SEO specialists completely forget.

"The more hierarchical you go with your headings, the better the article ranks in the search engines. I've tested this out on numerous articles on different sites—starting with a rather flat header structure (H1 and H2's), and then 6-12 months later adding in H3's and sometimes H4's. In over 80% of the cases the traffic for the article has increased after I've made these changes."

Google really likes organized and well-structured pieces of content. And using H3s tells the crawlers that you know what you are doing. Also, going deeper into the structure allows you to write more natural headings without keyword stuffing. Which is a good thing because—

Once upon a time it was easy to fool search engines. All you had to do was write the word sex in white at the bottom of the page a hundred times on a white background and you could get tons of free traffic. It was invisible to visitors but was enough to trick the search engines.

Fortunately, everything is better now and Google bots are much smarter.

For example, this very article is about SEO tips, but it doesn’t need to use the main keyword at all. And Google will still be able to figure out that it is about tips from SEO experts.

Because keyword density is a secondary factor.

"One of the biggest illusions I had while I was beginning with SEO is that keyword density matters. I believed that you really should use a keyword a certain number of times in order for a piece to rank. Over time, I realized that this is not the case. Nowadays, I know that you only really need to mention the keyword in a handful of places. The thing that really matters is the relevance and the quality of content."

For example, this article about <a href="https://usetrust.io/how-to-build-online-presence/">building your online presence</a> by Nadiia doesn’t use the main keyword too many times. It focuses on delivering comprehensive knowledge about the topic.

Sometimes SEO experts can't see the forest for the trees. It happens to the best of us! Once, I wrote a piece about proactive customer service—which I thought to be the very opposite of reactive customer service. I didn’t notice that there is a company called Proactive and people who google the query simply want to contact their support team.

"Look at the search results page first! I wasted so much time going after&nbsp;queries that brought up brand results&nbsp;or were going against super high-authority websites that our websites would have no chance competing against. It's like checking the weather. You can have all the fancy bells and whistles to track your data but until you walk outside and make sure it's not raining, you're not 100% sure what's going to happen."

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Sometimes, you get so buried in data and analytics that you forget the basics. This is a typical beginner's mistake when it comes to SEO. And googling the query should always be a step in your process.

Extra Tip: Google shows different results for every user and your search results may be slightly biased. Try using incognito mode or turning off Google’s personalized results with the psw=0 parameter. Adding this and other parameters at the end of your URL makes the results more neutral. For example, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=content+marketing&amp;pws=0&amp;hl=en">https://www.google.com/search?q=content+marketing&amp;pws=0&amp;hl=en</a> probably shows different results than <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=content+marketing">https://www.google.com/search?q=content+marketing</a>. Give it a try!

12. Embed relevant YouTube videos on your pages and blog posts

Content marketers and SEO specialists know that readers like pretty graphics. But they keep forgetting that there is something even better than images—videos!

"We published a video and embedded it on the relevant page of our site. Without any other changes to the page, within one week the page rose two spots in the SERPs up to #2. It was incredible. That was my aha moment when I realized the power of YouTube for on-page SEO purposes."

This is a golden piece of advice indeed. Visitors who play the videos embedded into your articles tend to stay much longer than those who only read. And you should also remember that Google owns YouTube. While this is only a theory, adding YouTube videos usually makes Google bots happier. John is not the only SEO expert who noticed this phenomenon.

13. Keyword difficulty is less relevant for local searches

This tip is particularly valuable if you are involved in promoting a local business. Even when your city is not specified in the query itself, you can get massive traffic from this type of general search queries.

"New people to SEO always make the same mistake. They assume their site is too small or they don't have the power to go after massive volume terms. This is outdated thinking, especially if you are targeting&nbsp;Local SEO. I made this mistake, and I have seen hundreds of others make the same mistake. It doesn't matter if it is your first blog post or piece of content. Go after the biggest, highest volume term that makes sense. Google will&nbsp;boost your ranking for people searching close to you."

You can try it yourself. When people google things like <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=pizza+close+to+me">pizza close to me</a> they get results based on geolocation.

This one will probably raise your eyebrows.

What? Wikipedia? I thought that all backlinks from Wikipedia are no-follow links. Isn’t that the case anymore?

Well, it still is. But no-follow links are good for SEO too. While they don’t have a direct impact on your authority and they don’t have any juice, you shouldn’t ignore them altogether. Just like social media signals, they have a big impact on your site authority. There are many indirect benefits of no-follow links and <a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/are-nofollow-links-actually-good-for-seo-here-is-proof/">it has been proven that they work</a>.

And one of the easiest places to win some no-follow links is Wikipedia.

"There is one good method to associate yourself or your brand with Wiki, and that is by finding opportunities for link building on their articles from broken sources. They have a specific website for broken links, so finding them is simple. The editors, who are committed to giving the highest quality information possible, will go to great lengths to ensure that your article is at least as good as the one before it."

Eating at fancy restaurants is fine but you shouldn’t refuse a free all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. In a similar manner, while you work on your SEO it is perfectly fine to grab some easy no-follow links from Wikipedia.

15. About 25% of SEO efforts should go into writing, 75% into outreach

In many companies, there are more outreach professionals than content writers. It is a perfectly healthy proportion. 10 great pieces of content with 1000 backlinks are far better than 1000 blog posts with 10 backlinks between them all.

Many SEO experts need some time for this truth to sink in.

"Initially I believed content is king and focused 100% of my time writing blog posts to drive traffic. While this worked and it drove millions of page views over time, I later discovered the power of backlinks. By getting other sites to link to core pages, your page and website authority improves. This creates a ripple effect to help rank your site for keywords much more than creating more content can. So if I had spent 75% of my time promoting my content and 25% creating it, I'm convinced my traffic would be five to 10 times bigger. "

There are many things you can do to promote your content and earn links. Which brings us to our next SEO tip, namely—

16. Original research, charts, and infographics get more links

Most media outlets are not keen on linking to other websites unless they have a clear benefit from doing so.

That’s why winning backlinks can be a tough job.

But there are two situations when they simply have to acknowledge their sources:

You can win the first type of links when you are an authority in your field. But if you are just starting out, you may want to focus on publishing original research instead.

"We frequently use original research and data in our content. The data is fact-based and usually displayed in visual charts that tell a story. This makes it easy to convey the findings and it is differentiated from normal text. The uniqueness is the key and it must add distinct value."

It is not that difficult to run a survey on your website. Think of an interesting topic, ask some questions to collect responses from your visitors, and prepare a report based on your research. You can prepare a survey with <a href="https://www.google.com/forms/about/">Google Forms</a> and distribute it online via different channels.