Search engine optimization naturally refers to search engines as if they were all the same or equal in some way. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be farther from the truth as far as most websites are concerned. Ever since Google assumed the top spot and ran with it websites have been focusing most of their efforts on trying to get a bigger and bigger piece of what seemed like an ever-increasing pie. Currently websites can expect to receive upwards of 80% of their traffic from Google alone and that constitutes close to 90% of all of the traffic from all of the search engines combined. Even if you work hard to spread your marketing out to include significant amounts of newsletters and direct referrals, Google alone will probably still deliver somewhere around 65% of all of the traffic that you get on your site.
Those numbers could vary, of course, but you get the idea – focusing your early efforts (and the majority of your long term efforts) on casting your net out into the waters owned by Google is going to pay off in all kinds of ways before other options will. Plus, many or most of the same techniques you use when working to maximize your results with Google will apply to the other search engines as well.
Now that we’ve identified where to hunt, Let’s get started with SEO!
