You may not get all the traffic you need from organic and paid campaigns on Yahoo, Ask and MSN Live Search. However, you can gain serious amounts of traffic and SEO benefits by using social media marketing strategies.

One of the first things you can do to increase traffic from engines other than Google is to create and optimize all types of content possible. Below are a few suggestions.

• Blog search: Blogs are the low-hanging fruit, easy to launch and maintain. Every company should consider a blog strategy to interact with customers and other people who comment on its brand, products or services. The keyword-rich fresh content and communication with power bloggers can create inbound link-love that will go a long way toward boosting organic search engine rankings.
• Video search: Videos can be useful for many types of businesses. Perhaps a demonstration video explaining a complex product would work well. For instance, creating safety in cars is easier to communicate in a series of short videos and would be much more interesting than a printed guide describing vehicle safety features. Optimize and syndicate your videos on AOL.
• Local search: Get listed in local search engines. Most engines provide free local listings. At Yahoo Local, you can get a free Basic Listing consisting of your company name, address, phone number and other business details. MSN Live Search partners with Citysearch to create its local listings, and Ask has Ask City. After these three, don't overlook the verticals serving results in your niche because they accept business listings also.
• Image search: Ask3D and other major search engines will display images with web results; therefore, customers can find you via your online images. Optimize your images with descriptive alt tags and file names that use the keywords accurately describing your images.
• News search: You can also get a lot of links by optimizing and submitting your press releases to Yahoo News and Ask News. Announce your next training conference or local breakfast meeting. Make your press releases newsworthy and informative for display and indexing as news in web results.
• Viral campaigns: Viral campaigns done right can create a lot of links and traffic. Going viral depends on creative relevance and distribution. This requires planning and preparation to yield successful results; blogs, search engines and humans love it.
• Social networking profiles: When appropriate, create a profile on a social networking site that your brand fits with. However, you must know the rules of the community and build a relationship with its participants well beforehand. Map out a strategy and know the communities intimately before you go there because such a campaign can backfire if not executed with professional style.
• Social media marketing campaigns: Following is a list of sites you can target for social media marketing campaigns, as revealed in the Seattle SMX session, "SEO Meet SMM": Wikipedia, Yahoo, Answers, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Amazon, Technorati, Twitter, craigslist, Yelp, Judy's Book, Citysearch, wikiHow, Newsvine, Squidoo, Naymz and Tagalag. Let your team be creative and reach out to these communities with cutting-edge information your audience can use.
• Place articles in niche sites: One last tip is to write articles in your area of expertise and then submit to niche sites, including social media sites. This will result in links and search listings if you are knowledgeable and can write well. If you don't write well, hire an editor to spiff up your piece.