SEO For The Big Three

I am hoping that none of you read the title and were expecting
to rank on the first page of all three major engines next week.
Ranking highly on all three major engines takes time, patience
and a good few rounds of tweaking to get the perfect balance of
onsite and offsite optimization. Although, done properly it's well worth the effort.

Ranking your website highly on one of the "big three" search
engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone
ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three
algorithms, three different sets of rules - and yet there are
websites out there that have first page rankings across them all
– how do they do it?

While all of the major search engines use different algorithms,
the end goal of all three is the same: to provide the searcher
with the most relevant results available. It is this one common
thread that makes it possible for an SEO to rank a website
highly across all the major engines.

For example, if inbound links are given 0% weight then
insignificant sites will rank highly for high-competition
phrases. Many reputable companies such as Microsoft could lose
rankings for their own names so links must and will always hold
value. On the other hand, if links were to hold 100% weight
then sp@mming the search engines would be a simple matter and so
there are a limited number of possible variables in between
these extremes that this factor can have, no matter which engine
we are optimizing for.

That said, there are still three main engines with three
distinct algorithms despite common requirements. To clarify how
to optimize for all of them it's easiest to discuss them
individually first. Due to the way their algorithms work, it
is best to expect rankings on MSN first, followed by Yahoo! and
finally Google.

MSN

While MSN has the lowest number of searches performed on it,
ComScore's report back in July revealed that MSN searchers were
also 48% more likely to purchase a product or service online
than the average Internet user. A very important statistic for
website owners that sell online.

To rank highly on MSN one needs to build a solid sized site, a relevant theme
throughout the site that focuses on your primary keyphrases and a
good number of links. MSN doesn't (at this time) employ an
aging delay on links such as the one employed by both Google and
Yahoo! so the effects of the site and inbound links can be
picked up very quickly and with good SEO efforts one can rank
well within a few months on MSN for competitive phrases.

Yahoo!

Until recently Yahoo! acted very much like MSN, but now it's
leaning a bit more towards Google. Ranking a website well on
Yahoo! requires a solid-sized site with unique content and a
very good number of links.

Yahoo! does have some type of page value factor at play. Many moons ago Yahoo! was playing
with a PageRank-like calculation called WebRank. They even went
so far as to put out a beta toolbar testing it. This indicates
that there is a factor at play in the Yahoo! algorithm similar
to Google's PageRank – they just don't advertise what a specific
page's value is.

To understand what to expect from Yahoo!
one must understand that when you get a link to your website it
won't deliver its full value for a number of months. While the
exact number of months in unknown, it appears to be around 8
before it delivers its full weight, though it will hold some
weight from day one and this weight will increase as time passes.

To rank well on Yahoo!, you must optimize your site similar to
what you would do for MSN and you must build a large number of
inbound links and have patience as these links age. You will
not see a sudden spike 2 weeks after a large link-building
campaign. You will likely have to wait 3-4 months to notice any
significant effect.

Google

Virtually every webmaster and website owner is primarily
concerned about attaining Google rankings because of the
significantly higher number of searchers using it. Provided
that you are building your website following the best practices
of SEO (i.e. unique content, a sizable amount of content, and a
good number of incoming links), then your rankings are sure to
follow. However, because of the aging delay it will likely take
longer than for MSN or Yahoo! Google considers the age of your
links, your domain and even the individual page to be factors,
and the longer your page has been online the better.

Essentially, ranking a site on Google requires that you continue your link building
efforts on an ongoing basis to ensure that you end up with
more-and-more links, and that you update your content and add
content on a fairly regular basis (through the addition of a
blog for example).