We've been doing some comparative studies of search engine ranking factors of the big three search engines. As any pro SEO has probably noticed, the differences in SERPs have become more pronounced over the past year. A lot of changes have occurred in the ranking algorithms of Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as structural changes.
*Search Engine Ranking Factors: SEOmoz
Each year, SEOmoz - a leading search marketing agency in Seattle - publishes its "Search Engine Ranking Factors" report. They interview top SEOs in the field and survey them on what they think are the most important factors for ranking improvement in the search engines.
Combining their insights with our own internal research has helped Gnosis Arts better understand and clarify the ranking differences among the Big Three.
*Search Engine Ranking Differences
The first big difference we've noticed is that the "older" SEO tactics (pre 2008-ish) still carry a lot of influence in Bing and, to a lesser degree, Yahoo. Let's call these tactics "SEO 2.0", collectively. They include common, basic and well-known SEO applications such as
*Keyword in the TITLE tag
*Keyword in <h> tags
*External, inlinks with keyword in the anchor text
*Bing Search Engine Ranking Factors
With regard to Bing, we found that often times SEO 2.0 is all that is needed to get into the top 30 rankings. Bing still has a long way to go to produce the level of quality of Google SERPs. Furthermore, in Bing external inlinks don't even have to have much link popularity (i.e., PageRank) themselves - or be considered highly trusted domains. Also, theme-relevancy doesn't appear to be as important in Bing; it doesn't seem to matter all that much whether, in the case of Site A linking to Site B, that Sites A and B have anything to do with one another. It seems that what's still important for ranking well in Bing is what was important 2+ years ago, more or less.
*Yahoo Search Engine Ranking Factors
In our opinion, Yahoo's SERPs are even worse than Bing's. They seriously need to work on their QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) algorithms, as old, stale results permeate Yahoo. They have become slower at indexing new content over the past year and a half, and often their results aren't as relevant as Google or even Bing.
In terms of ranking factors, basically the same applies with Yahoo as with Bing - just to a lesser extent. Basic on-page optimization coupled with basic link-building, will still boost your rankings. Again, theme relevance is not that important with Yahoo.
*Search Engine Ranking Factors: Google
But with Google, it's become a totally different ballgame. SEO 2.0 won't get you very far anymore. For linkbuilding, Google amost demands relevancy in order for the inpointing link to have any effect whatsoever. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that relevancy is now at least as important (if not more) than simple anchor text or pagerank.
Additionally, the trustworthiness of the inlinking domain is much more important in Google than it is in Yahoo/Bing.
Another big difference is the diversity of links. Google seems to place more weight on links from a larger number of root domains, whereas in Yahoo/Bing, this doesn't seem to matter as much.
And don't forget that page load time is now taking a more prominent role in Google. Google is placing more importance of the quality of the user experience than Yahoo/Bing.
*Conclusion
If you want to rank well in Yahoo and Bing, then SEO 2.0 tactics are often (but not always) enough. Basic on-page SEO and a little link building is usually sufficient to produce significant ranking improvement in Yahoo/Bing.
However, this is NOT the case with Google. With Google you have to dig deeper. The link popularity of the inlinks is much more important. So is the trustworthiness of the inlinks. And user experience is also more important.
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