Which Search Engines Should I Focus On?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

An interesting question posed during a recent conversation: Which search engines should I focus my search engine optimization strategies on?

It becomes interesting for a number of reasons. When you start to research the hundreds of search engines in use you start to realize that 75% of them actually rely on the big three or four for their results. They act as ‘super’ searches and deliver results gathered from those main search engines. You cannot direct any SEO strategies towards them since they don’t actually index themselves.

Digging a little deeper you come across some that are not widely known outside their own small sphere of influence. Should you spend time getting listed on them? Search engine optimization is not a inexpensive activity. ROI can be an important issue for some businesses. The cost of getting one or two visitors from a little known search engine may not be cost effective in the long run.

Search engines have a knack for finding you eventually. The key is to get listed in the top search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask. Other players such as Lycos, Alta Vista, All The Web and perhaps Mamma may help to spread the word a little further. Which ones should you focus your search engine optimization strategies on? None is my suggestion – particularly if you are first starting out.

The focus of any search engine optimization strategy is to get your pages first indexed and then to have them ranking highly. It doesn’t matter which search engines you look at, the basics are going to be the same. Keywords, Content and Links.

There are other SEO considerations such as page design and readability, the use of sitemaps and robots file and internal linking. However these will generally influence the search engines equally.

When it comes to ranking your website in the search engines, think first of the page and your visitor. Optimize them with some tweaking for the search engines and you will get listed. Focus on one or a small group and it could be at the cost of other search engines. Get the basics right first!