Every business wants to be ranked on the first page of most Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The higher the rank, the better the traffic–this leads to more business.
To enjoy such high search ranks, businesses usually devote a lot of their time and efforts to Search Engine Optimization. However, thanks to numerous search engines operating in the world, there is a persistent question that keeps popping up in the minds of businesses—should one have a single SEO strategy for all search engines or multiple ones for a search engine?
In all honesty, it is a challenging question to consider. But we are trying to understand the question and find an effective answer to this dilemma.
Keep reading to find out!
Importance of Search Engine Optimization
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics behind SEO, it’s time to address why it’s so important.
First—let’s address the obvious: Without optimization, your website will not be found by anyone. Therefore, you will not be able to generate any online revenue, and you will have to close your business immediately.
Secondly—businesses don’t fully know SEO: Even if you have an amazing product, but no one knows about it, you won’t get a single sale. Moreover, most people don’t know the correct SEO ways.
When trying to rank on a search engine, you must remember that every other website is trying to rank higher on search engines. And with nearly 2 billion websites worldwide, the competition for top rankings is very real.
What Are the Leading Search Engines in the World?
It is helpful to know which search engines you’re working with to find out how effective your SEO strategies will be. After all, different engines have different needs and different requirements to rank a website.
Knowing the search engines and which search engine you want to rank for is key in making the right strategy.
The following are the world’s most popular search engines:
Google is the most popular search engine in the world, with more than a billion search queries made daily. Google is used for 83% of all web searches.
Bing
Coming at a distant second place, Bing is the second most popular search engine in the world, accounting for 2.83% of searches happening in the online world.
Yahoo
Amounting to 1% of web searches, Yahoo comes in third place. After Google and Bing, Yahoo is one of the most used search engines in the world.
Baidu
The Chinese counterpart of Google, Baidu, is to China what Google is to the world. A huge majority of web searches in China happen through Baidu.
Yandex
The biggest search engine in Russia, Yandex, is the most used search engine in Russia enjoying a huge market share like Baidu in China.
DuckDuckGo
Although a new search engine, DuckDuckGo has grown in popularity thanks to its privacy-focused service.
Important Ranking Factors of Different Search Engines
Now that you know which search engines you are working with, you can find out their primary ranking factors and how to take advantage of them.
As mentioned above, these are the major ranking factors for different search engines.
Let’s try to understand each of them:
Google’s top search ranking factors
- The quality of the content
- Site’s mobile-friendliness
- The loading speed of pages
- User’s site experience
- On-page optimization
- Quality external links
- Internal link structure
Bing’s top search ranking factors
- The loading speed of pages
- Site’s mobile-friendliness
- Location of the user
- Quality of backlinks
- The freshness of the content
- Social signals
- User Engagement
Yahoo’s top search ranking factors
- Content on the site
- External links to the site
- Social signals to the website
- Technical SEO done right
- Mobile-friendliness
Baidu’s top search ranking factors
- The user experience of the site
- Relevance of website
- Legal and inappropriate content
- Internal links
- Quality external links
- Original, unique content
- Metadata
Yandex’s top search ranking factors
- Meta details
- Geo-targeting
- Age of website’s domain
- Quality external backlinks
- Quality of the content
- Mobile-friendliness
- User Engagement
DuckDuckGo’s top search ranking factors
- Quality external links
- Location of the user
- Social signals
- Mobile-friendliness
- Quality of the content
While these may seem too much for you, an SEO consulting services company Eco York would know how to tackle these for your business effortlessly.
Should You Have a Different Strategy for Different Search Engines?
As we have seen above, each search engine has a unique set of factors to help them evaluate and rank websites. These general guidelines will help you determine whether a particular SEO strategy will succeed for your specific situation.
Before you start testing different SEO strategies and comparing their results, you must take a step back and look at your website from an objective perspective.
If you are running a website in China, it has to follow Baidu’s SEO factors more vigorously because that will bring results. If you work with an SEO agency, they will know what needs to be done.
Therefore, it is a case-based evaluation that you need to do based on the market you are trying to do. Hence, state your goals before optimizing your website for any particular search engine. Then proceed.
Finally, as everyone believes, create original and unique content that your user will love and attract high-quality backlinks from credible sources. Search engines will follow.
Conclusion
We hope you can better decide what SEO strategies to use for your website with all these factors, based on the search engine prevalent in your market.
If you can do that, you are well on your way to successfully boosting your organic traffic and increasing online sales.
In the end, search engine optimization is one of the most important aspects of internet marketing. Without it, you will never be able to get your website in front of as many people as possible.
And when you do it, do it with poise and smartly.