Don't think that you need to optimize a page for each search engine. It doesn't work that way. Just do good optimization and all engines will rate you accordingly. Now, you should be concerned about making sure each engine finds your web site and that it is relevant for your key search phrases. But don't make drastic changes to your pages because Ask or Microsoft has you at page 2 while Google has you at the top of page 1. Not unless you absolutely know those changes won't cause a drop in your Google rankings. If you're uncertain, or if you make those changes and see Ask move up and Google move down, by all means change it back. It's just not worth it.After that, I read Shari Thurow's post, Understanding Search Usability. Here's what she had to say:
Search-friendly design is user-centered or usage-centered design. The focus is on end users. Search engine-friendly design, on the other hand, is a design for information retrieval systems only. Want your web site to show up in the top 10 results in Google? Then design a web site only for Google. Want your web site to show up in the top 10 results in Yahoo? Then design a web site for Yahoo. While you're at it, design a site for Microsoft Live and one for Ask.com. Cloak all of these sites and make sure you redirect them to the "real" site when you believe you have detected an actual human user. Lather, rinse, repeat.Shari isn't saying that you should SEO for each engine per se; rather, the gist is that Google, Yahoo, and MSN users are different. Nevertheless, it was kind of funny reading what Stoney wrote and then reading Shari essentially recommending the opposite strategy. I asked my favorite Victorian SEO (other than Jen Slegg and Jim Hedger, of course), Todd Friesen, what his thoughts were, and he said, "It's not like you need a different site for MSN users vs. Google users. I do one size fits all SEO, because by and large it does."
Wise words, Todd; however, this question pops up in our Q&A section and elsewhere every so often. It's interesting how many people get upset that they're ranked highly in Google, but less so in Yahoo/MSN, and whether they should have a "Yahoo" version of their site so it'll rank higher. I chatted with Lyndon Antcliff about this, and his response was perfect: "The return is hardly worth the effort. Of course, this may change...which is the great thing about SEO. :)"
Think about that. Is it worth the effort to optimize your site for every major search engine? Think about all of the things that differentiate one from another, and how you'd have to take all of those factors into account and craft several versions of your pages that you'll show to the appropriate search engine and user. "Well, Google emphasizes links but Yahoo likes keyword density and MSN prefers that you sacrifice a goat, while Ask requires jelly beans and argghhhhghhghgh..." Plus, overcompensating for one engine could tip the scale and hurt your rankings in another. I think that keeping in mind general best practices (for guidance, check out our Search Engine Ranking Factors, as well as SEO Book's How Search Engines Work piece) is more than adequate enough when optimizing for the various search engines, because trying to spread yourself too thin by focusing on all three could result in problems across the board.
There is certainly a lot of cross over between the engines, and I think just focusing on the overall best practices is a good place to start, then tweaking as appropriate. Without laying a strong foundation, you aren't going to get very far anywhere.
But one of the most important elements of the equation often gets left out. That is, the match up of the site with the demographics of the search engine user. In many ways, this comes back to the conversion issue. Number one spot on the number one engine, delivering the most traffic, but no conversions may not be nearly as important as a better match up on a lesser engine if it converts like mad.
You still don't want to neglect any of the engines, but at the end of the day, which engine should you focus on... the one that makes you the most money (or whatever your important metric is). For many, that may be Google because of market dominance, but it is still a question worth figuring out first.
I have said it on another posts, depending on your target audience and demographics of each search engine users is where you want to concentrate your SEO efforts. But considering that google has 57% of search share I don’t think is a bad idea to concentrate just on google.Another important factor is gender. Google has more male users than MSN for example, so if you sell female products you may want to go deeper in how MSN index your website.Searchenginewatch has an interesting article about searh engine demographics, here is the link
My experience has basically been: Google loves links and authority sites and Yahoo loves Content and I have no idea what the other search engines love (although its now been suggested goats and jelly beans - so we'll have to add those to the Search Engine Ranking Factors).
Given a low competition key word (or phrase) - I can get a basically blank page to rank very well in Google with the right title, enough links and good anchor text. But it will be no where to be found in Yahoo.
Given a low competition key word (or phrase) - I can get a huge site indexed and ranked #1 in Yahoo by having enough content - lots and lots of it. But without any links, Google will ignore it.
My point: Each search engine seems to like different things, so you build for both (or more) as best you can and eventually everything will even out.
Are you suggesting we build pages that have a nice descriptive title/url, great on topic content and plenty of key-phrase rich links pointing to it from sites closely related to the subject we're targeting?
You'll never get anywhere doing that, mate! :)
"Given a low competition key word (or phrase) - I can get a basically blank page to rank very well in Google with the right title, enough links and good anchor text. But it will be no where to be found in Yahoo. "
That's been my experience precisely. I recently put up a tutorial video (Thanks for the nudge Wethead!), and it started getting Google traffic immediately. Nothing from Yahoo. I'm guessing it's because the page is the video plus just a few lines of content.
I have a HUGE (content), quality, mature (over 1 year old) website that gets 50% returning visitors, tens of thousands of good links and a cult like member following. It dominates on Google ranking for over 60,000 long tail and over ten extremely competitive one and two word phrases. This website doesn't make it past page three on Yahoo for any of the one or two word phrases I'm targeting. Overall bounce rate is 26% and much lower for my main terms. The site does not comply with W3C with over 500 errors and it's not listed in dmoz. I don't pay for any adwords or YPSM. All the traffic is organic. I do have some Google Adsense ads on the site. Those are the only factors that I could possibly fathom making the difference, but no one in my circles agrees with me that those could cause the ranking issues on Yahoo.
the truth is that they will all rank you well in time if you do the right things. In my experience, the only difference is the order. If Yahoo and MSN pick you up first, it usually takes a little while for Google to respond and vice versa. Almost like they are trying to snub the other ones results. But after about a year, you can be #1 across all the major ones.
If I rank well on Google, I don't really care about Yahoo and MSN. When I'm #1 on all three, the most amount of traffic is Google by a large margin. I then just wait for the other two to figure out that I should rank and eventually it just comes. There is really no point in overdoing it for all three engines. Unless the client has a ton of money he'd like to waste of course ;)
Interesting post Rebecca. I agree with Todd for the most part - if it fits, wear it :)
Having said that, a break-down of what you see being the main differences between the algorithms would make for very interesting reading, if you ever need to do this kind of thing.
Ok so as I understand, Google hates SEO. When my site is in #1 position in Google, naturally and I start messing with cloaking and other SEO methods to rank better in Yahoo and MSN, etc. I risk of loosing my #1 spot when Google finds out that I'm up to no good.
My view is if I got a nice, comfy spot in Google, the rest will catch up. Continuing to rank high in Google will benefit me more than raising my ranking a little bit in Yahoo, MSN & etc. and risk of loosing my Google spot.
Here is another idea. How about creating a sepparate site with a different domain, unique content and focus it's optimization on Yahoo. Then now that I think about it, if go through all this trouble why not optimize it for Google too and reap the rewards?
Cloak and design for each search engine? What year are we in?
The Google bot will take you out just for using the term 'cloak'. j/k but seriously most forms of cloaking are dangerous.
Rebecca,
Forgive my ignorance, but what are Victorian SEO's?
SEOs from Victoria, BC Canada
That's a bit disappointing, I was picturing a gentleman SEO with fabulous facial hair and whiskers, puffing away on his pipe while scratching out his latest linkbait piece on the seven best ways to bag an elephant.
Now that sounds like an SEO Rockstar!
Speaking of facial hair, I'm thinking of doing this Movember stache for a cause (growing a moustache in support of Prostate Cancer - raising money and awareness). Any other Mozzers interested? I'm guessing the photos on December 1 could be hilarious. Rand would have to be excluded, that guy is the king of various facial hair ventures.
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/labor-day-fun-vote-on-facial-hair-for-rand
James, I would think it's someone who has been doing SEO since the 1990s? Am I right Rebecca?
I've only recently gotten into Seo in the past 6 months. Which I blame SEOMOZ to blame for mostly. ;-) I think I'd tend to agree with Lyndon. I think in the case of spending a ton of time coding for each engine, in creating all these extra pages/sites/etc I think the law of diminishing returns comes into play.
Unless of course yahoo,msn, google re-do their coding so that they are dramatically from each other. I don't see that happening, all of the major search engines are trying to provide the best results that fit humans as best as possible.
I believe that as long I create content and design for humans my sites will do well.
Thanx to the great Google god (and a 90% Google market share), we don´t have to bother with this decision in Germany ...
In 2011 SEO prediction Google and other search engine search volume ratio will be 80:20. So we have to concentrate For Google to get more business.
We should all spend more time considering what we can do to our sites to improve our rankings at Yahoo. I know I spend so much time thinking about, researching and optimising for Google that my knowledge of Yahoo is pitiful.
You could try creating whitepapers, articles, linkbait and similar content built to take advantage of a specific search engine's more highly weighted ranking factors.
That is a very good idea. I'd love to see what I could get ranked in Yahoo and how the rankings differed from Google and MSN. I've definitely always had more success with the latter two.
If you do so with a "crusty" old domain it should be a pretty quick test, compared to doing so on a fairly new domain. (: Let us know how it goes!
not sure i agree with your analysis, rebecca - i can virtually guarantee that shari made her "cloaking recommendation" with tongue firmly in cheek.
when she's on a panel at a conference, i've listened to her encourage the audience at to actively file spam reports and "out" anyone whose SEO practices are less-than-sparkly-white.
the day that shari starts recommending cloaking, you'll find me skiing in hell, because it's frozen over ;)
Yeah, I didn't think it sounded like Shari, either, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if she were being facetious. Nonetheless, I've heard/read the same advice elsewhere--I just used Shari's snippet as an example.
You can be 100% sure that Shari was not recommending optimizing for the different engines with different sites and then cloaking them! It's hilarious to even think about that and Shari in the same sentence!
They key is to provide value and do it the right way. If you do that, SE's will find you. If links farms were actually providing value to people using Google, instead of ticking people off, then Google wouldn't frown upon them like they do. I design sites with best practices in mind, and the rest takes care of itself. That strategy has never failed to date.
That being said, if I know Google loves header tags, I make sure they are in the code regardless of what Yahoo or Live thinks of them. You should build your site (somewhat) toward specific search engines, and with Google dropping between 60%-70% market share for a typical site's traffic, that is obviously who you design for.
Joe
For the most part I SEO For Google - that's where the traffic is for most travel websites. Eventually Yahoo & MSN acheive top 10 rankings but it takes longer than if you SEO'd a site specifically for MSN or Yahoo.
I very strongly believe that MOST SEOs, especially those new to SEO, should not waste time and money trying to optimize a core website for each individual search engine. Build a website that can hold its own on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
I say core website assuming that your domain name is not considered to be disposable. Further, I'm assuming that the optimization tactics you want to use will not include those that could harm your website's potential to rank well on Google, Yahoo, and MSN in the long run.
How to Win on the Big 3
Before undertaking any SEO efforts for your core website, thoroughly read and understand each of the major search engines' Webmaster Guidelines. Although search engines weight each factor/element in their algorithm differently, you'll quickly learn that each deems many of the same common factors/elements crucial to your ability to rank well in their specific index. Take this information and create an optimization strategy that considers and incorporates as many of these major common factors/elements as possible.
In a nutshell, you'll have created a well-optimized website better suited to outrank the competition because it:
I still find it crazy that Google and MSN/Live are even mentioned in the same sentence nowadays. I can't imagine anyone would be too fussed about actually taking the time to optimise their traffic for Live - it's nice to have but it's not going to be a business breaker either way. Yahoo can be a little frustrating sometimes but, really, so long as Google is doing well then it's all good. The other 2 are the icing on an already tasty cake.
rebecca,
thank you soo much for posting this. a client emailed me today asking why his rankings were slipping on yahoo and what we could do about it. i answered his question with a simple link to your post. you rock. i owe you a big hug and a drink when i see you again.
thank you for sharing your knowledge
My corporate site is green field (new domain, niche content, no competitive products) and we are just starting to rank in Google. Although we try to consider SEO techniques that play well across all SE's we haven't made as much progress with MSN and Yahoo. In general I agree with Jane and would like to spend more time optimizing for the little guys.
As a SEO we all know that Google is very popular search engine and most of the traffic on our site comes from Google. But still we should to ignore Yahoo & MSN. Because sometimes they are also useful for getting traffic. If we want to rank our website in Google at that time we should to consider Google as a primary sarch engines and try to develope our website as per google webmaster guidelines. And for Yaho & MSN we should to consider them as a our secondary search engines and then we also should to do something related to getting listing in yahoo and MSN.
If we do then we can list our websites in all 3 major search engines.
Here's an article from a couple of months ago that reiterates a lot that was said here: Whether to optimize for Google alone or to mix the efforts. Not as good as the seomoz article, but still, not bad.
Timely post.... ....this morning I was looking at this exact data for our site.
In the last 24 months we show a 4x increase in Google traffic, while msn and yahoo show a slight decrease.
Should I worry and re-work the site to make up for declining traffic from the 'other' engines?
....or is this just reflective of Google's increase in market share and more users are just using Google for search???
Anyway -- great timing for this post.
Until the recent shakeup, I was ranking page 1 or 2 for Google and page 1 for Windows Live Search and Yahoo, so it certainly is possible to please them all. I'm back to the drawing board on Google though. I most certainly have not either sold or paid for links, so dunno what their problem is this time. Sigh.
One thing that works for me (so far) is to focus mainly on Google and supplement the main site with mini-sites for Yahoo / MSN (keyword density) and "promotional" pages by using services like Squidoo, Gather or HubPages in order to drive traffic to the main site. Although they could be penalized in Google (as I think Squidoo is), they can rank higher on Yahoo yet.
Well, my website https://www.fortunehotels.in has PR 4 and good rank in google but in alexa it's going down. I have downloaded alexa toolbar & placed alexa widgets on the website but no improvement there. Even I read on many sites that alexa widget, redirections are myth. Is that true?
This goes back to my delima. I still don't fully understand what Yahoo is doing. I'm obsessed with figuring it out as Rand demonstrated that conversion rates seem to be higher on Yahoo than they are on Google at the SEOmoz seminar. I have some websites that rank on page 1 on MSN, Yahoo and Google. Others have dominated Google for well over a year and don't rank at all on Yahoo. Everyone has a different answer when I ask the question about Yahoo. Rand says that they like different links, some say dmoz is more important, others claim W3C, some say they care more about keyword density, my circle claims they are bias towards Yahoo paid directory listings and Yahoo Paid Search Marketing. I have seen nothing conclusive or any firm data. My team's personal tests have revealed nothing so far. Maybe it's obvious or I just missed something, but it's starting to drive me nuts.
"Maybe it's obvious or I just missed something, but it's starting to drive me nuts."
And that is why this is a great industry. Where else do you spend all of your time trying to figure out how to play a game, where the rules are different everywhere you go, are unpublished, and are changing all the time? It does drive us nuts - and therein lies the beauty.
Right on. That does make it all worth while. If there is any logic to it, then we will surely figure it out. Google seems to be more logical to me than Yahoo thus far.
Rebecca you're the best Sphinnster and always on top of things, that's why you get so many IMs form so many Seos.
I'm now wondering at which point "# of Goats" and "# of Jellybeans" is going to turn up in the new improved Page Strength tool: Now Optimized for All Search Engines!
Good points, as always. I personally think that everyone should be optimizing for StumbleUpon, though, so what do I know?
You have to pay attention to both strategies, while keeping firmly in mind the main goal - user satisfaction. In the long run, that's what will count and if you're providing users (and Yahoo) with good content, they'll buy/join/convert (kaching!) and will link to you (boosting it on Google). In the short run - figure out where your main market is (Google/Yahoo/elsewhere) and try to rank there first.
I have been wondering about the algo differences between google and yahoo for a while now, as i can get low competition terms ranked very quickly in google, but despite generating new unique content almost every day i dont show up in yahoo at all. i am puzzled...it may be time to try a yahoo directory submission...
At the moment I only bother about Google. If the traffic suddenly comes from another engine then I'll change tactics.
Being that the inner pages on e-commerce sites cannot be reoptimized, what would you recommend to reoptimize the domain?
While common, that doesn't or shouldn't have to always be the case.
In fact, making sure that you can highly optimize interior product pages can reap exponential rewards..... getting highly targeted pages to keyword and content rich for long-tail terms.... often connecting with those who are well down the purchase pathway.
I'm not saying it is perfect, but take a look at this page on REI for these Rossignol skis. Kill your javascript and you'll see that those tabbed sections expand... good example of progressive enhancement... meaning that all that extra copy is spiderable.
That page is a great example that ecommerce doesn't just have to be a few images, bullet points, and a price.
How can you incorporate additional body copy? What about strong feature-benefit language... which is also good from a selling point of view anyway? UGC with reviews?
Admittedly, depending on the cart script, there may be some challenges here, but I imagine that most ecommerce pages could be improved to enhance SEO value...... after all, look at Amazon pages, which often come up for searches for just about anything.... yes it's a very powerful domain, but their product pages aren't typical either.
I'm not a big Google fan, however, based purely on the numbers, I beleive the best strategy is to optimize for Google and hope for the best with the others. Any time spent optimizing specifically for Yahoo or MSN just won't bring in the same numbers. That said, a combination of strong links and content usually seems to get the job done.
Well said. I agree about focusing on wherever most of the traffic is. I think that what's considered "good SEO" practices at any given time tend to be based on what works for Google anyway. Wouldn't most of you agree? If you do things right (build links & optimize content), it's just a matter of which engine ranks you first - eventually you'll do well in all three. I don't very often see sites that rank well in Google and tank in Yahoo and MSN. Usually its the other way around...I see sites with few links and well-optimized content rank quickly in the latter two, then rise through the ranks in Google as the links increase.