Do you care about DuckDuckGo, Bing and Yahoo?
So you know how I have an online store selling personalised baby gifts?
Almost all traffic is from Google, as expected.
Google is #1 in the UAE where we're based and where our customers are based.
But recently, we've gotten a lot more traffic from Bing, DuckDuckGo and even Yahoo (got a sale from there too!).
In terms of SEO, I get asked from time to time, how to do SEO for these search engines, and whether it matters.
Frankly, Google is #1 everywhere (obvious Russian/Chinese/Korean exceptions!) so it makes sense to focus on that a lot more than anything else.
And all these other search engines have been playing catch up with Google so they have, in essence, been "copying" Google.
So it stands to reason that if your SEO is good for Google ,then it's good for everyone else.
ALMOST.
Bing has been steadily forging its own path and you will see that rankings differ over there. And they'll be quite different in DuckDuckGo too.
DuckDuckGo, for those not in the know, is a privacy focused search engine - it doesn't track you the way others do. It does have ads though so to me, it's still the same crummy ad-laden experience! (but I digress).
I recommend you setup Bing Webmaster Tools to help you get a better idea of how Bing sees your site, given that it's the next viable competitor to Google.
I'd also recommend looking at your analytics to see how much traffic Bing actually sends your way (and what other search engines send traffic).
Whilst SEO is, in essence, the same everywhere (the fundamentals, that is), each search engine places emphasis and value differently. Some sites
Here's a few things to look at:
is your site slow to load, especially on mobile? no one wants to wait for your slow site!
is your formatting clear and is your content easy to read? no one wants to squint at big chunks of text and blurry images
do you have links between your content? make it easy for people (and search engines) to move around your site and discover stuff
are your page titles vague or are they keyword stuffed? revise them to be concise
do you have a lot of content for teh sake of it? do you have little to no content? revise: answer questions, provide value, write the sort of content you would want to see online
Yes, you'll probably see different rankings in each search engine but that doesn't change the primary goal of your SEO: make your content easy to find and easy to consume.
Reply to this email if you want me to have a look at your website - you'll get a bunch of free advice within the next few days.
Peace,
Jaaved
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