SEO Step By Step Guide– 54.Balancing between Google and Yahoo

When it comes to optimizing our website, all of us concentrate on Google optimization for the right reasons. However, yahoo also sends a considerable amount of traffic. Therefore, it is important that we do not miss the traffic from yahoo as well. By making our website friendly to both search engines we will be able to get better rankings.

Google in general has the most comprehensive set of guidelines for SEO and when we optimize our websites for Google we would satisfy the requirements of most of the other search engines. However, each search engine will have their own unique approach to rating websites irrespective of the common elements between them.

Yahoo has both free listing as well as paid listing. Yahoo guarantees listing of your website for paid submissions though it does not give any placement guarantee. Google on the other hand is a completely free search engine. It does not have any paid inclusions. Its paid listings is in the form of Google Adwords but it has nothing to do with the organic search listing what so ever. Both indexing and placements depends on the quality of your website.

Google uses the concept of pagerank to assess the importance of websites where as yahoo does not have any such branded concepts. Pagerank is assigned based on various factors and one of the deciding factors is the number of links a website has; if your website is well linked and has a good number of one-way links, then the chances are that you will secure a good pagerank. Good pagerank in turn will secure good search ranking. Therefore when it comes to optimizing your website for Google besides on-page optimization, you should also take care of off-page optimization in the form of strong link building strategy. Yahoo on the other hand, emphasizes on-page optimization more than off-page optimization. Therefore, pay attention to on-page optimization details. It will not do you any harm and it will indeed enhance your performance in Google.

Another area where both search engines vary is the meta tags. Google has moved away from the concept of meta tags long time ago however, it is believed that Yahoo gives credit to meta tags still. However, we are not really sure how much of importance is given to meta tags by yahoo. It is always better to be on the safer side and pay attention to meta tags as well.

Though Yahoo pays attention to on-page optimization, it is Google that is content oriented search engine. Your website content plays a tremendous role in making your website relevant for a search that is made. To be in the good books of Google make sure you have keyword rich content and regularly update your website’s content so that Google bot will regularly visit your site.

On the whole the idea is to cover all possible areas of SEO so that you can satisfy both search engines when these two search engines are appeased, you will automatically perform well with other search engines too.

SubmitEdge