"Twelve Paid Directories"
"Eleven Bloggers Bloggin'"
"Ten Lord's a Link-Baiting"
"Nine Laides SEOing"
"Eight Web Stats You're Milking"
"Seven Steps to Great SEO"
"Six Blog Promotion Tactics"
"Five Golden Steps to Marketing Planning"
"Four Calling With Phones to Complement SEO"

Today: Three Non-French Search Engines

I have no idea what the French have to do with SEO (I'm joking, I do,) but there was nothing appropriate for the song. Of course, finding a suitable analogy for the number three wasn't hard at all. Three is the number of major search engines you have to compete for.

In order of preference (by how much traffic they send) the top three search engines for the majority of web sites are: 1. Google, 2. Yahoo, 3. MSN (Live). For all of my web sites Google brings between 50-65% of all traffic, Yahoo between 10-20%, and MSN - 5-10%. All three combined usually offer 85-90+% of all traffic. Factor in direct traffic (from bookmarks, RSS, etc.) which accounts for 5-8%, and then other traffic factors, you aren't left with much for other search engines.

The only other search engine that pops by once in a while is ASK. They sometimes have a 2-4% market share (judging again by my stats.) Since organic listings are so crucial, and only three engines deliver traffic, what are some key aspects for pleasing them?

1. Please Google - People, please read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and save me and you the time of dumb questions. So much info has been offered by Google on how to build sites correctly that you'll be busy til next Christmas. Pick up your free Sitemaps (Google Webmasters) account, and your free Google Analytics account. What more could you ask for? All the answers are right there. The biggest problem you'll have is getting quality, high PR, relevant one way links.

2. Please Yahoo - Rumors have it Yahoo still watches the keywords META tag. That's just a rumor. Fact of the matter is, yahoo routinely places newer sites in the index (ranking them high) faster than Google. (Google tends to have a time filter 'sandbox' on new sites.) But the general rules from Google will still apply to yahoo. You can even upload a Yahoo sitemap to your web site and get more web related info through the Yahoo! Site Explorer service.

Some interesting competitive market tools are available with Yahoo! that Google doesn't run (including links analysis for competitors).

3. Please MSN - Some people love MSN cause their new sites are ranked even faster in Live than Yahoo!. Needless to say, you generally don't get terrific traffic from MSN. They are, however, trying to improve their search results and are coming up with stringent guidelines. There are numerous rumours that they nail webmasters who get off-topic links, so beware. Also take advantage of some MSN tools like adCenter where you can do some keyword research.

All in all, if you build a web site that adheres to the Google standard, as it stands, you'll be set all across the board. Don't worry about other engines unless you're using languages other than English (i.e. Chinese = Baidu guidelines).

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