SEO Is More than Just Optimizing for Google

The search industry is always on a buzz about how to crack the Google algorithm updates and rank in search engine results. But is SEO just about Google? Too often we only think of Google when it comes to SEO because you want to rank in the greatest search engine there is. But are you missing out on anything when you are just going for the big picture?

Google isn’t the only place on the web where you could rank or sell a product. From a customer’s point of view, I would watch a Youtube product review before buying my favorite phone and if that looks good, I’d straight away go to amazon, read some reviews and add the phone to my shopping cart. For some privacy is a matter of concern going for online shopping since Google tracks your every move. They would just opt for a search engine like DuckDuckGo where they are not interested in your interest!

SEO is not just about Google and there are a lot of possibilities on the web to rank your product and get a good conversion.

Alternative Search Engines

The obvious question: Is SEO for non-google search engines worth it? We rarely see headlines of other alternative search engines.

The answer is, The recent changes in the popularity of new search engines makes the effort worth it to give a try. Not just that you can find new potential opportunities, you could also learn how SEO works in these new platforms and whether you should give attention to it or not.

When it comes to Google alternatives, there are many search engines that you could go try and rank.

Yahoo Search

Yahoo! Search is a web search engine owned by Yahoo. Yahoo search technology works very similar to Google’s. If you’re optimizing for yahoo, focus on straightforward and simple keywords since Yahoo tends to show webpages that have exact keywords. Yahoo treats title tags as an important factor to rank webpages in search results. Meaning, you should optimize the title tag relevant to the search queries without being long or repetitive.

Bing

Yahoo and Bing are not that good at handling search queries, comparing to google. Just like optimizing in Yahoo, Bing works on straightforward keywords. Bing does not crawl and index URLs more frequently. To make sure your website gets indexed on Bing, you should submit your site on Bing Webmaster Tools.

DuckDuckGo

While most people use Google to search to find the information they need, Google does a lot of tracking and collecting your information during the process about you and your habits and interests. With more news on data breach and personal information being misused, DuckDuckGo is a perfect solution for this. Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo tries to protect the privacy of its users by showing all users the same search results for a specific keyword and personalizing them based on the history of the user.

Internet is moving from a trackable arena to an anonymous realm, DuckDuckGo exploits the SEO opportunity with currently more than 12 million direct queries per day and 108 million visits per month.

Best thing? They have only one position on top for ads while Google bulldozes the approach with 4 paid ads on top.

DuckDuckGo has its own crawler called DuckDuckBot and there is little information available about their optimization outside the traditional method.

You can apply the following techniques to rank in DuckDuckGo search results:

• Attack quality links for your key term
• Do deep keyword research to find what searcher might query
• Learn the trends from your previous visitors and their demographics
• Add a geo-qualifier to your search query if you want to get listed in local results
• Optimize for Bing & Yahoo

Social Media Traffic

What do Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have in common?

Huge traffic that’s out of Google’s reach.

While social media may or may not affect your google ranking, Social media profiles are the first thing that appears in search results for brand names.

For others, Social media is no less than a search engine. People don’t just go to google to find everything. They also use social profiles to find what they are looking for. A job search on LinkedIn, purchasing through an Instagram business account or even to find the trending news on Twitter, Social media is a major medium for search.

Moreover, prospects check your social profiles and reviews to find out how authentic you are what kind of presence you have in each channel.

Companies should apply the concept of SEO not only to the popular search engines but also to the social profiles they are present.

Conquer Amazon SEO

Amazon recently surpassed Google to become the #1 product search engine. It is a great opportunity for every business to list their products and make a conversion. With over $232 billion net sales in 2018 alone, there is no doubting that Amazon is the leading online retailer there is. So who doesn’t want to be part of it?

While most of the people try to rank their product listing on their page, Listing products in Amazon opens the door for millions of potential customers. Amazon dominates Google search results they are having high authority for their website. This means you could hit the jackpot if you properly optimize your amazon listing for SEO, not to mention giving a close eye on product reviews. Product reviews have a huge impact on customers buying decisions.

Amazon SEO is more than ranking the page in Google, but to rank your page within Amazon. Almost half of the online shoppers go directly to Amazon for purchase rather than going for the google search results. This amazon pie will taste good for marketers if they are serious about getting conversions.

Ultimately, the web is all about making your presence known. Be it Youtube, Facebook, Bing or Amazon you want your prospects to see your existence, build relationships, share ideas or identity, Apply the concept of SEO everywhere you can.