Loading ...Google vs Yahoo vs MSN - Part 1
An interesting question was posted on a previous article I wrote, ComScore and Nielson release June 2008 search data‘, by Kosta Kontos. He asked if there is a difference in optimisation techniques between the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Today I will write only about Google and Yahoo, I will leave MSN for my next post…
Optimisation for Google and Yahoo, so what is the common denominator? Title tags, this is priority in ALL SEO.
The variables are incoming links, keywords (density) and anchor text.
Google loves optimised incoming links, by this I mean the links must have ‘juicy’ anchor text describing the landing page of the link. The anchor text must correspond with the landing page’s targeted keywords. A good example is, WebGrowth compared to small business online marketing specialists. The latter is the better option for successful Google optimisation (and it’s a long tail keyword).
Whereas Yahoo looks more at keywords within the content as well as anchor text in the footer. It is well documented in SEO Chat’s forum’s that Yahoo looks at the footer of the page for anchor text relating to the keywords on the web page.
So now we have a slight problem because Google doesn’t look at keyword density in content because of spam reasons. As webmasters or SEO’ers we need to find a happy medium for both search engines. In some cases you will find it to be a matter of opportunity cost i.e. do you sacrifice your Google #1 ranking for #5 to enjoy top #10 ranking in Yahoo or even #1 ranking in Yahoo, which search engine will bring you the most traffic?
If you study the above image you will notice that there is not much correlation in SERP’s between the three major search engines, especially between Google and Yahoo… In this case I searched for ‘burglar proofing’, I searched numerous keywords with all the same evidence, no two SERP’s are the same.
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