SEO Blog

It’s been a long time in the making, but the Bing/Yahoo merger has finally landed on these shores. Whilst our American compatriots have been using a Microsoft-powered Yahoo for almost 12 months, tomorrow marks the first integration here in the UK.

This European roll-out marks the first real move towards full integration between the two search companies. Of course it has been on the cards for some time, but any kind of announcement seemed elusive – at least until now. So what does this all mean?
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In the UK, Google controls 92% of the search market. By anybody’s standards, that’s a pretty hefty chunk. However, it isn’t total by any means and over in America the margin is much smaller. So whilst it would be wise to focus 92% of your energy going for gold on Google, make sure you don’t forget about Bing and the rest.

The search ranking factors don’t change massively across the different platforms, so you won’t need to makeover your entire site to adhere to the whims of Yahoo. However, it is worth taking a few simple minor steps to ensure that you are able to keep a close eye on your performance on each.
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One thing that Google has always been extremely adept at is gaining column inches. It’s one of the many inevitabilities of being one of the world’s largest businesses and also impacting so many industries. Sometimes this is a good thing; however on other occasions the search titan would probably much rather prefer the spotlight was elsewhere.

This week though they will no doubt be extremely pleased with the level of coverage they are receiving. Not only are blogs, Twitter and Facebook buzzing with talk of Google+, but the slowly morphing SERPs and now the redesign of Gmail are helping to provide ample additional ammunition.
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The primary role of a search engine is to deliver the results that a searcher is looking for. Failure to do so could lead to users going elsewhere. This is why Google and Bing invest so much time and money in developing theirs algorithms, as well as other associated innovations.

The latest battlefield appears to revolve around the personalisation of search. In other words, creating SERPs that are unique to individual users. Google has implemented the +1 social add-on, as well as using the search history of signed in users to shape results. Now Bing appears to be taking this further, employing Facebook like to provide better SERPs.
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Bing has been a search engine on a mission. Whether on Internet browsers or mobile devices, its market share has been steadily creeping up for the past year or so – extremely steadily in the UK. However it is in the former of these two markets where they have been making real strides in recent months.

First of all they buddied up with Nokia, becoming the default search provider for all devices. Now though they’ve made a similar deal with RIM, developer of BlackBerry products.
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The $64,000 question, just what do Google and Bing use to judge our websites and determine rankings in their listings? Some we know, many we don’t, others we simply assume. The fact is, there is nobody outside of the respective headquarters of Bing and Google with access to this knowledge. In fact, there might not even be that many here either.

This post was prompted by the rather flippant way in which Steve Tullis (Program Manager at Bing) reportedly confirmed that Click through Rate (CTR) was a ranking factor on Bing. This might not be big news for Bing, they’ve probably been using it for a while, but for the world of SEO it could have a pretty major impact.

Suddenly, not only are you concerned about optimising your pages and getting those rankings in order, but you have to make sure you get the click. So what does that mean? Well, apart from going after the most appropriate keywords for each page, you also have to have some pretty enticing Meta too. This is something I’ve covered in the past – Using Your Meta as a Marketing Tool – so I’ll avoid repetition.
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Google has become a generic term for search. I use it as such quite regularly in this blog, more often than not because that is what readers expect. We optimise for Google because, in the UK at least, they have a 90% share of the search market. By any standards, that’s pretty impressive.

Very few websites are ever going to be brave enough to optimise solely for Ask or Bing. Whilst they do control a slender slice of the overall searches being performed day in day out, ignoring Google in pursuit of a niche would be foolhardy at best.

Unfortunate as it may be, the priority is and will continue (for the foreseeable future at least) to be with Google. That’s where the people are going, it is on their pages that you’ll earn most traffic. This often creates a narrow, even blinkered approach to Search Engine Optimisation. Why go after 2% of the searchers when there’s 90% coming from one source?
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Even seasoned marketers tend to refer to ‘Google’ as the generic search engine. Many people focus huge attention on getting to the top of Google and treat the others as also-rans. But is this attitude out-dated?

Here in the UK, Google commands a huge percentage of the overall search market. Recent figures suggest that they receive 9 out of every 10 searches. This puts them in a commanding position and, in many respects, justifies why they receive so much attention from SEO types.

But whilst they remain the safe bet and the most likely to deliver high quantities of traffic to your site, it isn’t fair to simply dismiss the likes of Yahoo, Bing and even Ask. After all, between them they do still command 10% of the search market.
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Whenever people ask about SEO, they tend to just refer to improving their Google ranking. This isn’t a huge surprise, particularly as Google have a 90% grip on the UK search market, but it might be a little short sighted.

Of course SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, not just Google Optimisation. This means you are looking to increase your site’s strength in the eyes of all search engines, not just a select few, or even just one. However, each different engine employs a unique algorithm. There are numerous similarities, but there are also subtle differences.

You might get only a trickle of visitors from the likes of Bing and Yahoo, but every little counts. The danger with being entirely Google-centric is that you can often find yourself falling foul of major algorithm updates, perfectly demonstrated by the recent Mayday issue.
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Sometimes, even as professionals in the field, we all have to step back and remind ourselves that it is called Search Engine Optimisation, not simply Google Optimisation. What works for Google might not work as well for Bing or Yahoo, which is why it is so important to become too focussed on just the one.

Okay, we are all well aware of the fact that 90% of all the searches performed in the UK are done so using a Google site. Therefore, it makes a good degree of sense to go after this vastly superior market. In fact it would be somewhat churlish and a little foolhardy to instead focus on one of the competitors.

Fortunately, by and large the optimisation processes are very similar across the board. If you do things right and you do them well, you ought to be rewarded by the full quota of search engines. To be sure though you might want to install the Webmaster Tools from each and see how the search engines perceive your site.

Often it will be the smallest issues that can cause you to lose rankings. So by implementing just a few small changes – changing a few broken links, implementing permanent redirects or adding some copy – you can be boosting your Bing ranking in no time.

As I’ve said before, you can’t ignore the 10% of other potential search traffic providers; however, with the complexity of modern algorithms and the tendency for them all to focus on the quality of links and content, this is a good place to start if you are broadening your horizons. You certainly don’t want to be doing anything to appease a lesser search engine, say Yahoo, which will undermine your Google presence – unless of course you are convinced that this will be the best source targeted traffic.

Open up your horizons by making sure you are getting plenty of decent links and all of your pages are full of excellent, unique content. Keep an eye on how the other search engines view your site and make sure that nothing could be ruining your rankings elsewhere. But always remember that Google is just one of many search engines; granted, it is by far the biggest, but that doesn’t give anybody license to simply forget the others.