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Grand Slam SEO! Can My Site Rank Well on all Four Major Engines?
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor,StepForth Placement Inc. (c) 2006

One of the most frequently asked questions readers and clients
ask, revolves around how websites can be best optimized to meet
the algorithmic needs of each of the major 4 search engines,
Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though there
have been wide sweeping changes in the organic search engine
landscape over the past six months, the fundamental ways search
engines operate remains the same.

This question, or variants on it, reflects a shared notion among
some webmasters that SEO driven placements at one search engine
might come at the expense of high rankings across the other search

engines. As the thinking goes, the techniques used to make a well
optimized website rank well at Google might somehow prevent that
same site from achieving high rankings at Yahoo, MSN and/or Ask.

Alternately, webmasters and advertisers who already have great
placements at Google but not at the others appear wary of
sacrificing their Google rankings in pursuit of higher placements
on Yahoo, MSN or Ask.

The differences between how each engine works appears to be
causing a bit of confusion among webmasters and search marketers,
especially regarding how to optimize well for all four at the
same time.

Techniques that work on one engine might not work as well on
another. In some extreme cases, techniques that work brilliantly
with old school engines like MSN and Ask, and even with the
invigorated Yahoo,  are a kin to a kiss of death on Google.

There is one search engine friendly site design and optimization
philosophy that works, almost every time, without fail. Good
content, smart networking, and persistence over time. A well
constructed website, or one that has been treated by a good
search engine optimizer, should be able to rank well on all major
search engines, provided that site has useful, relevant
information to express.

Questions about ranking well on all four engines brings up some
of the basic differences between the major search engines and,
in light of so much change in the sector over the past few months,
a look at what search engines look at, and how they do it seems
in order.

There are a lot of differences between the major search engines
but, by and large, they all gather information the same way. Each
major search engine uses unique spider agents known as Googlebot,
Slurp (Yahoo/Inktomi), Ask.com/Teoma, and MSNbot, (updated list @
Wikipedia ), that find information by following links from document
to document across the web. Spiders are designed to revisit sites
on a semi-regular basis as well, though they often hit the index (or
home) page more often than other pages.

Spiders do tend to dig deeper looking for changes to internal
documents based on changes to the index (or home) page. This
allows the engines to maintain rapidly updating versions of the
web, or parts of the web, in separate proprietary databases.

Each search database has its own characteristics and most
importantly, each engine has its own algorithms for sorting and
ranking web documents.

Getting information into those databases is the first stage of
SEO. The site needs to be constructed (or reconstructed) in such
a way as to allow search spiders to easily read and absorb the
information and content contained on them.

Assuming realistic expectations and goal setting are already part
of the equation, the success or failure of any multi-engine
optimization campaign is dependent on the type of site being
marketed, as much as it depends on methods and techniques used to
market it. If the ultimate goal is strong search engine placements
across all major search engines, a few compromises in style might
be a temporary necessity in order to expose the great content and
reap the rewards of multiple rankings.

Before beginning the building or construction of a site, having a
working knowledge of the major on and off-site elements each search
engine looks at when examining and evaluating a site and its
contents is a key starting point.

There are two overarching areas all search engines examines when
ranking a web document or site known as "on-page? and "off-page".
As their names indicate, search engines examine factors and elements
that occur on the document or site in question as well as factors and
elements occurring on other documents and sites related by links or
by topical theme.

While the search algorithms of each engine might differ in the
number of factors found on or off page and the overall importance of
those factors, they all examine generally similar sets of data when
deciding which should rank where in relation to whatever
search-queries are entered.

For example, Google loves links, as does Yahoo, MSN and to a
lesser degree, Ask. MSN and Ask are  considered to be old school
search engines, allowing simpler SEO techniques to work quite well,
as they still do with Yahoo.

On-page factors are generally found in one of four areas, Titles,
Tags, Text and Structure, while off-page elements tend to involve
links, locality, search-user behaviours and the performance of
competing sites.

Here is a thumbnail breakdown the most important factors each
search engine considers, roughly laid-out  in order of importance.

Google: Incoming Links, On-page SEO, Site Design Spiderability,
User analytics, Outgoing links,  Inclusion in other Google
indexes, Document Histories

Yahoo: On-page SEO, Links and Link Patterns, Site Design, User
analytics, Inclusion in other Yahoo indexes, Document Footprints

MSN: On-page SEO, Site Design and Structure and Sipderability

Ask: On-page SEO, Site Design, Site Structure and Spiderability

Because Google drives approximately 50% of all organic search
traffic, SEOs, webmasters, and search advertisers tend to be most
concerned with Google placements. When planning a search
optimization campaign, whether for a new site or in the
redevelopment of an existing site, building around Google's needs
is obviously the most logical path. It is also a smart way
to find your way into the other search engines. Though each of
the rival engines want to present the best possible results,
Google's algorithms account for quality scoring to a deeper
degree than the others do. In other words, if your site meets
Google's various tests, it will likely meet those of the other
engines.

Google puts an enormous weight on its evaluation of the network
of links leading to and out from every web document in its index.
Most, if not all, documents found in Google's index got there
because Google's spider Googlebot found it by following an inbound
link. Because its ranking algorithm is so heavily link dependent,
Google is frequently forced to tinker with how it evaluates links,
a process that generates a score known as PageRank. The basic wisdom
on links says that incoming links from topically relevant sites are
beneficial while those placed in order to get a better ranking at
Google are not. Google also examines links on a document or site that
are directed towards other sites in order to gauge if a webmaster is
trying to game it or not by participating in link-networking schemes.

To one degree or another, the three other major search engines do
this as well, though MSN and Ask are not known for using link
analysis as a weighty measure of site or document relevancy. Yahoo
most certainly does. Link analysis is used to determine the
seriousness and credibility of a web document by comparing it with
other documents it is associated with.

Once a document exists in a search engine database, several
on-page factors are examined. The engines tend to examine several
elements of any particular document and the sites they are associated
with including title, meta tags (in some cases), body text and other
content, and internal site structure.

The key to providing search spiders with a strong on-page
experience lies in presenting search spiders with a well designed,
topically focused site. Again, remember the four basic on-page areas;
titles, tags, text and site structure, creating documents that are
friendly to all four search engines is not terribly difficult.

There are a few easy tips that should be kept in mind though. New
websites should always introduce themselves to the search engines
with very focused content expressed on a very basic site structure.

Adding content as time goes forward is a much better way to feed
search spiders than giving them a site that is already full of
information. Search engines, especially Yahoo and Google, appreciate
fresh content and can be "invited" back to a site again and again
when new material is added.

Webmasters with pre-existing websites enjoying great rankings in
one place but seeing sub-standard rankings in others should take
a step back and re-evaluate the overall theme presented by the
documents that make up their sites. In a technically perfect world,
the most relevant and topical documents would reach the top of the
rankings. As the search engines really are striving for a measure of
technical perfection, ensuring your documents are tightly and
topically focused is essential.

For those who have lost position at Google but not at the other
search engines recently, check your link networks for undesirable
connections. Good placement at MSN, Ask and Yahoo but sub-standard
placement at Google is almost always a signal that some links
going to or coming from your site have raised questions at Google.
You should also check the content your site carries to be sure it
is (as much as possible), original and not simply a copy of content
found on other sites.

In the end, the best practices tend to win with the major search
engines. A good website or document should be able to place well
across all four engines at the same time, provided the webmaster
or SEO specialist takes time to follow SEO best practices.
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Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing
expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for
StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine
Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes
the opportunity to share his experience through interviews,
articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at:
jimhedger@stepforth.com
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