SEO FOR THE BIG THREE

SEO FOR THE BIG THREE 

When we think Search Engine we think either Google, Yahoo or Bing. It's come to a point where we can't imagine a world without them. Let's find out what it is that makes them tick.

Any mention of search engines mostly conjures up an image of Google, while Bing and Yahoo often go unmentioned. It is interesting to know how these search engines differ in the way they optimize their search results.Search engine optimization across multiple platforms also provides an enterprise or an individual with a competitive edge over competitors who rely exclusively on Google based search engine optimization. In this article we analyse the differences in search engine optimization strategies for different search engines.

How search engines display different types content 

A good first step is to identify which search engine drives traffic to websites. This can be done quite simply using Google Analytics. There are plenty of tutorials online that show you how once you identify this, there are two ways you can proceed: Consolidating search queries from your strongest traffic diverter or by trying bring in higher results from your weaker search engines. Either way, one of the key ways to optimize your strategies isto identify the strongest search engine for the type ofproduct you try to market.

For example, Bing shopping services display reviews that are collected from different e-commerce and review websites. With tabbed navigation and a dedicated explorer tab for related searches. Searches for products on Bing often return different results and have a different impact on the internet user's mind than shopping based searches on Google.

At the same time, books and magazines are better indexed Google through the Books' tab, especially with regards to scientific magazines which offers seam- less integration with Google Scholars for the authors of articles. Depending on the product, different search engines index and display results in different manners. Based on the engine you want to specifically optimize for, it's important you optimize based on how that particular engine displays results for searches in your particular category.

The similarities: One SEO strategy to rule them all 

Outside of these differences however, it must be noted that indexing on search terms and the techniques that are used to optimize a page for search engines are more or less the same across search engines. Factors the lead to adequate optimization on Google are quite likely to produce satisfactory optimization on Yahoo or Bing with a few minor tweaks.

They all depend heavily on the metadata of the page to index and display results and optimizing this aspect will lead to good results. There are no different strategies as such for optimizing different search engines because of these similarities across thesearch engines which are quite similar. Also, search engines often have alliances and vastly similar algorithms which makes it possible to simultaneously optimize across different search engines. Yahoo for example, has a tie up with Bing making all Yahoo based web searches identical to Bing based ones.

The only differences lie in the advertising strategies and layouts of the two search engines while displaying results, something that need not concern us while we try to optimize our webpages for these search engines. The differences vary based on the target audience you would like to impact. They may tend to use different search engines by default which results in minor tweaks to SEO strategies. It's important to remember that search engines have close relationships with produetsand browsers Google Chrome users tend to use Google as their default search engine whereas Internet

Explorer users favour Bing. Moreover, android phones often have Google Chrome as a preloaded app which mobile phone users tend to prefer Therefore, based on your audience, the type of search engine used varies.

Tweaking for Bing

 There are very few changes that one needs to make to their SEO strategy depending on the search engine. The theme here seems to be that Bing prefers local search results more favou than Google, which is more concerned with overall popularity. The key differences in the way these two search engines understand search queries are Queries with multiple interpretations: Bing displays local results first in such cases. Google displays the most popular website for such a query

Contextual freedom:Google offers a little you can word queries. Restaurants insouth Mumbai and Food in Colaba' are to show similar results. Bing is a little more restrictive in terms of linguistic freedom and exact search terms are preferred.

Flash based webpages: Google does not index flash content whereas Bing actively values pages with flash content and may rank them higher.

Age vs Authority: Google has no algorithmic preference towards the age of a webpage whereas Bing tends to use the age as a valid metric for page ranking. Both search engines however do tend to show some favouritism towards domain named with a .edu or a gov extension. Apart from the subtle differences mentioned above, it suffices to optimize your website specifically for Bingor Yahoo only by ensuring that title tags are given a lot of relevance.

This is because Bing gives more importance towards keywords in title tags than Google does. Exact sequences with a smart cutting your webpage specifically for Bing based search queries. It is probably also a good idea to register/submit the website to Bing webmaster Tools. This ensures that the contents on your page are indexed. which will guarantee that Bing uses metadata from your page and starts directing web traffic towards it.

Mobile friendly pages 

Both Bing and Google have recently started optimizing search results specifically for users operating out of mobile platforms. This is displayed terms grey subtext beneath search results which say "Mobile Friendly While it is unclear how much of an algorithmic difference a mobile friendly webpage makes for mobile based searches, it is still a good idea optimize your webpage for mobile platforms as a vast majority of search engine queries are now being directed through smart phones and tablet based devices.

Mobile based search engine optimization is an area that is sure to witness a lot of progress over the next few years as search engines seek to optimize their results on increasingly mobile based internet services. There are many tools available on Google Developers to check if a website is mobile friendly.