Different horses for different courses.....

[reaper30]

Do you tackle your ranking with different processes?
What I mean is, everyone talks about getting a ranking in google. I suppose I wouldn't be the first or the last to think in naivety that ranking in yahoo would follow.
But, even though google and yahoo are both big search engines, do they operate the same way or just similar? If they don't index sites in the same way then is there something we should be doing differently to make our rankings better in yahoo or visa-versa.
I hope this question makes sense.

[LynxSI]

I'm not a guru with Yahoo or Bing, but I do submit to both of these in addition to Google and have webmaster accounts with them. The e-commerce storefront I use has built in support for both google and yahoo XML sitemaps which cater to the features each of these support.

There are differences but I haven't pinned them all down yet. I did find Bing to be even more responsive to backlink text content in its searches than google (it'll even override your title tag its search results). The other annoying thing I can't figure out is that Bing places my sitemap as the first result for most products I search for on my site. I suspect this has to do with the fact that the brand name will occur many times on the sitemap?

There are some good articles about backlinks, no-follow, hidden divs/spans and more if you google it. The bottom line of the study I saw said that all three did read link text even in hidden divs, but each handled title tags/meta tags a little differently. Different maximum lengths or different weighting of your keywords based on sequence in the meta tags, etc...

[Robert Puddy]

Originally Posted by reaper30

Do you tackle your ranking with different processes?
What I mean is, everyone talks about getting a ranking in google. I suppose I wouldn't be the first or the last to think in naivety that ranking in yahoo would follow.
But, even though google and yahoo are both big search engines, do they operate the same way or just similar? If they don't index sites in the same way then is there something we should be doing differently to make our rankings better in yahoo or visa-versa.
I hope this question makes sense.

Not everyone... its a myth you need to be ranked in search engines to make a success from this business.

In fact basing your business on, and spending so much time on getting and keeping such rankings is ludicrus...

[reaper30]

Originally Posted by Robert Puddy

Not everyone... its a myth you need to be ranked in search engines to make a success from this business.

In fact basing your business on, and spending so much time on getting and keeping such rankings is ludicrus...

To be fair I am not saying that to make a success in this business you needed to rank well, I am purely just trying to discuss the differences in the search engines.
Yes there are other methods for creating traffic and income ppc etc as has been said but I am trying to understand the search engines.

[Jim Gillum]

If folks would spend as much time on promotion instead of worrying about Google they would do a whole lot better......
And besides...Google is on the verge of doing it to the small business sites....

Saw that coming.....

[reaper30]

Originally Posted by Jim Gillum

If folks would spend as much time on promotion instead of worrying about Google they would do a whole lot better......
And besides...Google is on the verge of doing it to the small business sites....

Saw that coming.....

what do you mean Jim? google is on the verge of doing what to small business sites?

[Jim Gillum]

From what I have been reading they will be placing the big boy sites ...like amazon and such at the top of the pages.....(in addition the the paid spots)

Would create a problems for marketers that offer hard products.....pushes them down the page....

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Robert Puddy

In fact basing your business on, and spending so much time on getting and keeping such rankings is ludicrus...

It depends on your business model.

If you like, I could rattle off some 'myths' about your line of work, multi-level marketing.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Jim Gillum

From what I have been reading they will be placing the big boy sites ...like amazon and such at the top of the pages.....(in addition the the paid spots)

Not really. What they're wanting to avoid is affiliate and reseller sites beating the primary site, especially when it comes to brands. How well they'll be able to do this isn't clear and it may only apply to specific cases.

Now, certain sales and aggregation sites, such as Amazon and NexTag, will have an advantage when it comes to domain authority, age and links and will get default ranking for certain products. However, they can be beaten.

[Dennis Gaskill]

Originally Posted by reaper30

But, even though google and yahoo are both big search engines, do they operate the same way or just similar? If they don't index sites in the same way then is there something we should be doing differently to make our rankings better in yahoo or visa-versa.

They operate in a similar way in that they use artificial intelligence to rank sites. The devil is in the details though, and none of them are giving us the details. The do not operate in the exact same way though. They each place their own values on different criteria, and I presume each have different criteria as well.

In my experience, if you have a page that ranks well in once search engine, if often ranks will in the others. That isn't always the case though. I've had pages ranking number one on one search engine, but the same pages were buried several pages deep on another search engine.

Since all SEO is guesswork based on experimentation in which we don't have all the details, it's impossible to definitively say what you should do differently from one engine to another.

Dennis

[reaper30]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Not really. What they're wanting to avoid is affiliate and reseller sites beating the primary site, especially when it comes to brands. How well they'll be able to do this isn't clear and it may only apply to specific cases.

Now, certain sales and aggregation sites, such as Amazon and NexTag, will have an advantage when it comes to domain authority, age and links and will get default ranking for certain products. However, they can be beaten.

even if this does happen, will this be a bad thing? I mean, lets say you want a new tv so you google it. If the first page always shows all the big boy sites then as people like to shop around they will start to look at page 2 more for the independent shops etc. I know I would if I knew that every time I searched I would get similar results. That is what is so good about the search engines, you are able to view alot more than is on your local high street. So our trying to get to page one will become trying to get to page 2. YES it will affect us if that happens, but, I don't think it will affect us too much but only time will tell on that.

[reaper30]

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

They operate in a similar way in that they use artificial intelligence to rank sites. The devil is in the details though, and none of them are giving us the details. The do not operate in the exact same way though. They each place their own values on different criteria, and I presume each have different criteria as well.

In my experience, if you have a page that ranks well in once search engine, if often ranks will in the others. That isn't always the case though. I've had pages ranking number one on one search engine, but the same pages were buried several pages deep on another search engine.

Since all SEO is guesswork based on experimentation in which we don't have all the details, it's impossible to definitively say what you should do differently from one engine to another.

Dennis

So for your marketing purposes then do you set up a different spreadsheet? Like one for google, one for bing and one for yahoo so if you are going to do anything different that you have found may get results in one of the other search engines you record it?

[LynxSI]

Originally Posted by ccmusicman

You don't need high rankings, or any rankings, to have a successful business online.

There are SO many ways to get traffic, search engines are just one. There is PPC, PPV, media buys, video's, JV's/Adswaps, Articles, your own email list, offline advertising, classified ad sites, forums, yahoo answers, etc.

Rob

An interesting thing to keep in mind is that if you did all the alternative promotion methods ccmusicman suggested above, you WOULD rank pretty well. As all your other promotion methods would (or should) provide backlinks to your main site. (Even offline promotion should have your URL on it! Although google doesn't index paper... yet ;-)

Its always important to balance your promotion efforts. That doesn't nulify your SEO efforts or set it above any other promotion tool. I see a lot of extreme opinions on either end of the spectrum in this thread. I'd go with somewhere in the middle - don't obsess over your SERP and don't ignore it.

[Robert Puddy]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

It depends on your business model.

If you like, I could rattle off some 'myths' about your line of work, multi-level marketing.

wrong on both counts...

I have never dome MLM, hate it with a vengence, and traffic generation is so much simpler if you forget search engines even exist

[reaper30]

Originally Posted by Robert Puddy

wrong on both counts...

I have never dome MLM, hate it with a vengence, and traffic generation is so much simpler if you forget search engines even exist

Is all your traffic generation paid then Robert? I.E adsense?
Do you not bother with search engines and backlinking and articles?