SEO Blog

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.

As always the world of search has moved forward in huge leaps over the past 12 months. We have welcomed new sites – such as Bing – and have prepared to say goodbye to a few famous old names, not least Yahoo.

So what have the changes in 2009 meant for SEO in 2010? Well, the emphasis that has been emerging over the last year has very much been on the quality of websites. Google, along with Microsoft and Yahoo, have been cracking down on those disguising bad sites with good SEO; which has resulted in huge changes in rankings.
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If you’ve been following the latest online news with even a casual interest, you will no doubt have read a good deal about the various changes going on with the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Google are currently in the process of rolling of their real-time element within the search engine results. Bing too have adopted these Twitter updates and will soon be getting Facebook messages to display too. So what does this mean for SEO? Well, not a lot really. Yes, it is a significant change and the SERPs pages will look different; but ultimately it won’t affect your ability to optimise for certain key phrases and achieve a high level ranking.
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The Internet is rarely a stable place. However, developments in the last few months, particularly in the realms of search, appear to far outweigh those in recent memory.

First of all in June, Bing gets announced. There’s a major furore as Microsoft sneaked it out a few days early, possibly in an attempt to avoid Google attempting to trump them – which they actually did with the announcement of Google Wave on the very same day.
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