If you’re looking at your analytics reports regularly, you should see a nice contribution to your traffic from Google every month. If you’re not seeing that, then you need to take a look at your marketing efforts and website architecture.
What if an algorithmic update by the search giant penalizes your website?
If you’re not constantly working to bring in new customers, your business will quickly go under.
If you suddenly lost ranking in a search engine, it could take a month or more to regain traffic.
So, you need to build traffic from other channels. In a previous post, I showed you five sources of traffic besides Google.
Your Google optimization efforts will mostly help other search engines to understand your content and website layout. But there are certain things you need to take care of on your own.
Why you should care about other search engines: A look at the current search market
It’s not possible to make a search engine happy overnight in the same way it’s possible to go viral on social media.
If you can establish yourself as an authority figure in the eyes of your audience, then search traffic will not dwindle away like other sources. Search traffic is stable, scalable and free.
Most web users primarily use Google for their web search needs. The popularity of Google Chrome as a web browser is growing rapidly, which means that users are less likely to see other search engines when looking for content.
In the 2016 U.S. Google had 63.8% of the search share according to ComScore’s desktop search engine rankings. Other search engines also have a substantial number of users.
Although Google dominates the search market, there are other search engines that people use. The word “google” has become a verb because the search engine is so widely used. Although Google is the most popular search engine, there are others that you can optimize your website for to reach a wider audience.
Bing’s market share has increased, reaching over 20%.
The reasons for this rise are multifold:
- Mozilla dropped Google and entered into a partnership with Yahoo.
- AOL (now owned by Verizon) also ditched Google for Bing, as their default search engine.
- The default search placement on Safari was rumored to move away from Google.
The search engine titan–Google–probably didn’t lose its mojo. It will not lose its monopolistic market share in the near future.
Although Google is the most popular search engine, it is worth considering other options, such as Bing and Yahoo, for your enterprise. This is especially true for these search engines as they have a higher conversion rate.
Assuming that you are now convinced that optimizing your website for search engines other than Google is a good idea, here are four specific strategies for doing so.
1. Keywords, on-page factors and technical SEO hold an important place
Bing and other search engines use a less complex search algorithm compared to Google. The search bots on this site are not as intelligent as Google, so you will need to put in more effort to provide information about your website.
Meta keywords are still relevant in Yahoo and Bing, and may also be important for smaller search engines.
Meta keywords are tags that appear in the HTML code of a website and help describe the site’s content. They help you to understand what your content is about and what keywords to use to help people find your site. However, they are not visible in the live content on the page.
In 2009, Google announced that it no longer takes meta keywords into account for its rankings. The reason was that people were stuffing keywords into their content and making irrelevant associations, in an attempt to game the search engines. This diluted the quality of the search results.
Relevant keywords are key to being found in a search. Add common misspellings and synonyms to help improve your results.
Don’t use too many meta keywords, or your rank will suffer with all search engines.
2. Build “Wikipedia-like” backlinks for catapulting your rank in DuckDuckGo results
I have mentioned in many posts that due to the online world, people are more concerned with privacy than ever.
One reason for the increasing popularity of DuckDuckGo is that it does not save users’ search history.
Creating a website that is user-friendly is the very least that you can do.
Next, comes the role of link building. DuckDuckGo uses Yahoo’s technology to serve search results.
To improve your ranking, it is recommended that you get links from high-quality sources, such as Wikipedia. Even though no-follow links do not pass on link juice, they are still factored into Google’s algorithm as they are seen as credible, trustworthy sources. This is because Google relies on Crowdsourcing, which is where a large group of people contribute to a project or task, to provide accurate and reliable information.
3. Flashing it and getting local works well on Bing
I’m sure you remember reading an article about how Google dislikes flash websites, and how its algorithm does not index content from them.
The story is different on Bing.
Here’s their take on Flash websites:
RIAs, such as Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash Player, can make a site look better or work better for users.
If the data from your RIA can’t be read, it can lower your search rankings. The solution is to follow the basic technical SEO practices that we discussed in step #1. And, stay away from RIA based navigational links. Otherwise, further crawling will be prevented.
4. Leverage schema markup, but, ultimately, it’s all about the user
If you have been following me for a while, you know that I have been emphasizing the use of schema markup on your website.
It is microdata that helps search engines understand your content. Adding microdata to your HTML improves the way your page displays in search results. This data helps determine how relevant your page is and how it is displayed in search results, which can improve your click-through rate.
When you search for an event, like a music festival, you might see marked-up results that include the event name, date, and location.
Most importantly, keep in mind that search engines are looking to provide their users (searchers) with information that is both useful and relevant.
Search engines, search engines everywhere
Other search engines are becoming increasingly popular in areas where Google is not as dominant. Wikipedia provides a list of around 20 general purpose search engines, as well as many more subject-specific search engines.
The biggest competitors to Google are Bing (and Yahoo!), Yandex, Baidu, and the small-but-growing DuckDuckGo:
Bing and Yahoo!
In 2009, Bing and Yahoo! The agreement they drew up implies that their ranking, indexes, and search technologies are equivalent and can be used interchangeably as a single search engine with two separates interface. We will consider them as one for the rest of the article. Bing is an interesting option for SEO and marketers because it has a large market share in the US, and there is some evidence that its traffic converts better than Google’s traffic.
Optimizing for Bing
However, Bing does this in its own unique way. Bing uses many of the same technologies and ranking signals as Google, but in its own unique way. However, there are differences.
Some ranking signals count for more on Bing than on Google:
- Domain age and extension
- Social signals
The way social media is used can affect how well a website ranks in search results. The most obvious part it plays is via influence. If you are a social media influencer, your followers are more likely to share your content, which would give Bing a positive signal. The positive signals generated by your site can have a long-term impact on how well it ranks in organic search results.
- Page load time
On-page SEO techniques that work for Google may not work as well for Bing, and vice versa. Bing explains:
- Only one <h1> per page is expected.
- Internal links are used to determine how content is related.
- The keyword/phrase you are targeting should be used a few times in the content, along with variations of the keyword or phrase.
- Fresh content, like on Google, is an advantage.
Yandex
Yandex is the Russian equivalent to Google. It not only has a search engine, but also other web properties similar to Google’s such as email, photos, and products. Yandex holds over 50% of the search market share in Russian and is also used frequently in many surrounding countries.
Ranking in Yandex
Yandex is a Russian search engine that focuses on Russian geographical areas in local searches. It uses different ranking algorithms for .ru domains than it does for the rest of the web.
Compared to Google, Yandex’s indexing process is very different:
- Slower indexing process
- Pages larger than 10MB are not indexed
- URLs over 1024 characters are not indexed
- Language filtering:
- “Automatic” indexing for sites containing pages in Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian
- Content evaluation for sites in English, German, and French
- Other languages not supported
Finally, not all indexed pages can appear in search. If a page has a 3xx, 4xx, or 5xx status code, it can be excluded from search results, even if it is indexed.
Crawlability for Yandex
A website’s ranking on Yandex is more influenced by keywords than by internal links. This means that the internal structure of your website is less important to Bing than it is to Google.
Webmasters are encouraged to:
- Submit sitemaps
- Use static content, as the Yandex crawler does not support Javascript
Yandex’s bot examines the following HTML elements:
- Meta keywords: used to determine page relevance
- Meta description: used as the description in snippets (page text can also be used)
Baidu (??)
Baidu is China’s principal search engine. In China, the communist regime means that Google is not available. This implies several important points: first, that information is not easily accessible in China; second, that the Chinese government is able to control what its citizens can access; and third, that foreign companies are not able to operate freely in China. Baidu is restricted to websites that are written in Chinese. Finally, government censorship does apply.
Ranking in Baidu
The Baidu spider is responsible for creating the index for the Baidu search engine, similar to how other search engines work. -Baidu’s link submission tool allows for URLs to be prioritized for crawling, as opposed to just following links.
Baidu’s ranking algorithms do no discriminate against foreign sites. The sites that are ranked are only those that can match queries in simplified Mandarin. This means content in Chinese is a requirement.
The simplified script and Mandarin grammar presents a challenge for those who regions who use the traditional script (Taiwan, Hong Kong) as well as those who use other Chinese languages with the simplified script. Baidu is still used by websites and users in both cases.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is unique from other search engines in both its philosophy and technology. The company was founded with the belief that privacy should be a priority, and as a result, user profiling is not used to tailor results. Search Encounter doesn’t use a web crawler to explore the internet and determine which websites to include in its search engine results pages (SERPs). Instead, it relies on “sources” to determine which websites to list.
This means that when you search for something on DuckDuckGo, the results are not as relevant as they would be on other search engines. Even if you include a location in your search, it’s often not very accurate. However, the search engine is gaining popularity with people who are concerned about privacy and data.
Ranking in DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo explains:
DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. This includes a wide variety of sources that provide Instant Answers to specific niche topics, as well as DuckDuckBot (our web crawler) and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia that are stored in our answer indexes. We also have links in the search results from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
If your site is indexed on Bing, Yandex, or Google, it will also be available on DuckDuckGo.
In general, the best way to improve your ranking in any search engine is to get links from high quality sites.
Although there is not much publicly available information on how Google ranks pages,
Optimizing for DuckDuckGo
The following are suggestions for optimizing for DuckDuckGo: -Create unique and relevant titles for each page -Use meta tags -Provide quality content -Include targeted keywords throughout the website content -Optimize website load times -Ensure the website is mobile-friendly Although it has not been proven, some people believe that if you post the same content on different websites, it may help improve your ranking on DuckDuckGo.
Other strategies for standing on on DuckDuckGo include the following:
- Suggest that DuckDuckGo add a bang for you website. Bangs (!websitename) provide quick direct access to your site
- Use structured data (Schema.org)
- Reinforce your backlink strategy
- Make sure your website is crawlable and indexable for other search engines
