Whether you're an SEO agency, a freelance web designer or a part-time online writer, there are several ways to find new clients. The sad part of the story is that many small businesses don't completely trust freelancers. It's due to the increasing number of fly-by-night scam artists. If you're truly committed towards providing top quality services to clients, you can attract more and more clients by utilizing some of the most proven ways.

Given below are four ways you can use to get quick results.

#1. Word of Mouth
A word-of-mouth campaign has great potential. In fact, it's by far the best way to get more valuable clients. Building a solid web presence of your own is the most essential step that you should follow to launch a word-of-mouth campaign. You can either start a website or bog that looks highly professional and showcases the unique skills that you carry.

Once you've started with your online presence, it's time to spread the word about the services you offer. Whether you use social media websites or online forums, you should always remember to spend time in places where your prospective clients can be easily found. It's also a good idea to turn to your friends and colleagues who can be very helpful in spreading the word about you. This is a surefire way of attracting a good number of potential clients.

#2. Local Directories
Visiting local directories is also an excellent way of locating valuable clients. You should quickly list your business or services with popular online local directories. There are multiple local directories that you can use to get more clients. Add your listing to as many popular local directories as possible.

Here are a few that can really make a difference :

Google Places
Bing Local
Yahoo Local
Yelp
Merchant Circle
Yellowbook
Biznik
Foursquare
Whitepages

There are many more. If you're ready to get the most out of local directories, you should check out this list.

#3. Cold Emailing
Cold emailing companies does help. With a strategic email marketing campaign, you can quickly land plenty of clients. Before you start sending those emails, you should get ready with attractive deals. Also be ready to answer the queries appropriately that a prospective client might have in mind. If you operate or offer your services locally, you can also decide to have an initial face-to-face meeting with clients depending on your specific requirements.

#4. Partnerships
Now, this is a great idea! If you're a web design, you can plan to partner with large design firms. If you're a freelance writer, you can choose to partner with a copywriting agency or another freelancer. Partnerships work because they can easily create a win-win situation for both the parties involved. If you want to avoid low-client patches, entering into a partnership is a perfect option.

Do you have a constant flow of clients for your business? Please feel free to talk back in comments and share more tips on this topic.

And Google has once again ascended to the top of the heap for another one of our online necessities. It's already the biggest search engine in the world and YouTube is probably the biggest video sharing site in the world. Now, Google Public DNS has officially become the world's largest public DNS service.

This news comes by way of SE Roundtable, reporting that the public DNS service from Google is now "handling an average of more than 70 billion requests a day." When they first launched this service, Google said that it's goal was to speed up the web-browsing experience for the public, pre-caching the sites that it deems to be the most popular on the Internet. Of course, we have our suspicions that they have ulterior motives.

That's why webmasters were so wary of Google Public DNS when it launched back in December 2009. It represented yet another way that Google could collect user data, tracking their web surfing habits so that they can supposedly provide better, faster, and more relevant search results. But it's not like Google isn't already tracking your habits as you use Google Search or surf with Google Chrome.

Most people just use the DNS provided by their ISPs and some of the more savvy opt for OpenDNS for various reasons. What about you? Do you use Google Public DNS? Are you concerned about their data collection habits?

Yes, it's true that most of us use Google as our primary search engine, but Microsoft still holds a reasonably significant slice of the pie. And it wants to do something to make that slice just a little bit bigger, so it makes sense to rework that user interface in hopes of attracting a few more people.

Shown here is the old (current) search engine results page on Bing. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but Microsoft recognizes that it could always be improved. SE Roundtable has unearthed a new user interface and design for Bing that jazzes it up and makes it look a little more like a certain familiar friend.

One of the more notable changes is the move of the suggested search terms from the left sidebar to underneath the main search bar. This makes a lot more sense, since a lot of users will tend to ignore the sidebar altogether unless they are looking to tweak the results. You'll also notice that the username has been replaced with a profile picture instead.

The search icon (magnifying glass) has lost its color and it looks like Bing has really cleaned up the interface in terms of colors and gradients overall. I think we'd all agree that it's starting to look a little more like Google, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. It'll be more familiar, but it also means that Bing may have a harder time differentiating itself from the elephant in the room.

What do you think? Is new Bing better than old Bing? What changes would you make to the user interface?

Say hello to the new generation of leadership at Yahoo! His name is Scott Thompson.

Does the name sound familiar? It might, because Scott Thompson was once the president of PayPal. Part of the reason why Yahoo decided to snatch up this guy in the first place was that they say he was responsible (at least in part) for doubling PayPal's active user base from 50 million to 104 million. That's a pretty big deal, especially since Yahoo's user base is probably going in the other direction.

On the financial side, Yahoo saw a 5 percent decline for its overall revenue in the third quarter 2011 (compared to the same time the year before) to $1.1 billion. Sadly, the net earnings dropped a much larger 26 percent year-over-year to $396 million. That's not good and the financial savviness of Thompson could turn that ship around. At least, that's what they hope.

According to Search Engine Watch, the focus is to "quickly evaluate its sprawling products and kick them into shape to boost appeal to suitors and investors." Thompson says that they need to balance "value between consumer experience and the advertisers."

Yes, it's true that Yahoo is still relevant in some parts of the world, but Thompson certainly has a huge task ahead of him. If you were hired as the new CEO of Yahoo, what would be your strategy moving forward?

For those of you who are not aware, the SEO competition is still alive and kicking and we will soon to be announcing the winners for the Top Author Competition on GSEO.net.

Also it just goes to show you that we are not concerned of how many blog posts that are made but more on the quality of the blog posts that are made and how unique and informative they are.

The winners will all receive lifetime memberships. So far we have rounded the winners up to 7 final contestants:

1. Cori Padgett

Hate to Write? Web Content Made Easy, Even for You!

2. Zubin Kutar

Use effective titles to get the users attention on Google

3. Cijo Abraham Mani

How to measure the influence of Twitter users ?

Ways to turn your old broken URL's into effective link resources ?

Learn how Google will rate links from Facebook and Twitter

Will Search Engines give importance to Micro Links ?

4. Daniel Lew

The SEO Market Is Oversaturated with High Cholesterol

Slapping on the SEO Sunscreen So You Won't Get Burnt

SEO Is For Creative Technical People

Buying Sites Vs Buying Links

5. Srihari Reddy

SEO: In-house or Outsourced?

6. Mike Van Der Heijden

5 Tips To Give Your Facebook Some SEO Love

7. Peter John II Yap

The Internet's Bad Neighborhood