What search engine should you optimize for?  Google, Yahoo or MSN, which one?   By John Bolduan RealWebMarketing.com

People ask me this question all the time as if there was a magic bullet for each search engine. The simple answer is you shouldn't be optimizing for any of them. Now just what am I saying? Have I lost my mind? Now you might be thinking this: Do you mean you have a search engine optimization thing going and you say that you should optimize for Google, Yahoo or MSN? That's exactly what I'm saying. It really doesn't matter what the search engine is as long as you're setting yourself up correctly on the web.

The first rule for an effective website is to create a site that is helpful to searchers and is geared toward what they're looking for. When some companies optimize for a certain search engine, they are no longer doing what's good for searchers and is considered the beginnings of search engine spam. This term is different than what people have been calling e-mail spam. That's where you get unsolicited e-mail from everywhere. Search engine spam is creating websites or web pages that are trying to trick the search engine into giving a page a higher ranking in the results. There are many techniques that are wrong and can actually get you banned from search engines like Google. It happens from time to time and it is obviously a bad thing. Search engine spam is always focused on getting a higher ranking and not focused on the website offering for the potential visitor.

Instead of focusing on what the search engines are doing, we should all be trying to create the best content possible for visitors. After all, it's the visitor to your website that will give you a positive result. But you might say, if my content is good why aren't my listings higher? Well, sometimes there are details of good web design that people miss or don't know about. As a results, good content alone won't get you high rankings. It's all about focus and keeping a general theme to your website and creating your own community of people that over time will bring better search results. When you get to this point in your website's development, it would be a good time to bring in a web marketing expert who can help identify and problems or maybe help you with some more effective copywriting.

My humble suggestion is if you're optimizing for Google, Yahoo or MSN or any search engine, stop now. It's the wrong focus. You need to look at improving website content that's good for individuals looking for your product or service online. When you do that, you'll see some changes even without looking at the individual search engines. In fact, when you do optimization right, with the help of a seasoned professional, you'll find that you will rank well across almost all the search engines. It's not easy, it's hard work but it's better than having a thin offering online and trying to trick search engines for better results. Google, Yahoo and others have very good technology that can almost always sniff out search engine spam. With departments full of research people trying to better the algorithms for the most relevant results, it's best not to try to fool them, you will probably get burned. If you've ever seen a Google dance or a change in an algorithm that changed your search results, then you know what I mean. These entities have power and they don't care about you, they care about relevant results. Let that thought sink in.  

As I've stated before in other articles, it's patient improvement of your website that will reap rewards later. Sometimes it takes months, but could be years to get to where you want to be. Knowing that, get started today on improving your website and find a knowledgeable search professional who can help you optimize correctly.