Search Engine Diversification

Aaron Pratt (seobook) has written an excellent blog article on "Search Engine Relevancy". The title's a bit misleading though, because for me the article’s not so much about search engine relevancy as the diversification of the major search engines; Google Yahoo and MSN, and the different approaches website owners will have to take to achieve high rankings in any of them. Aaron argues that as Google ruthlessly refines it's algorithm with every major update, Yahoo and MSN are being left behind in terms of relevancy. This means that most sites that rank well in Yahoo and MSN will increasingly fail in Google. If you trying to market a website to achieve high search engine rankings, the question occurs; what strategy should you follow to develop your online business in the light of this increasing search engine diversification? It will most likely take a year for a new site to rank in Google. During this time it will get very little organic traffic from Google and a pay per click campaign, such as Adwords, will almost certainly be needed to get you through that first year of zero "natural" traffic. Rapid rankings in Yahoo and MSN are comparatively easy, however, because they don't attempt to gauge the "quality" of a site or its value as a resource. It's fair to say, at this time, that any old backlink campaign (with a "more the merrier" philosophy) combined with a high on-page keyword density will get you a number one ranking in Yahoo and MSN. This approach will lead to an effective penalty in Google and zero website traffic from that search engine. Google almost certainly penalises sites to some extent for having an excessive number of off-topic links, and a high keyword density. A high ranking in Google probably brings 10 to 100 times more traffic than the other search engines put together though, leaving website owners with a difficult dilemma. Do they patiently build a site waiting one or two years for Google to recognise them as a resource and reward them with a flood of traffic, or do they sprint for the line and target Yahoo and MSN, forgetting any realistic chance of search engine traffic from Google? The answer to me is clear. Create and promote two websites. One will bring instant traffic from Yahoo and MSN; the other will test your patience to its limits and bring no traffic for at least a year. But after that year of purgatory is over, the return on investment will be enormous.