Ranking your website highly on one of the “big three” search engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three algorithms, three different sets of rules – and yet there are websites out there that have first page rankings across them all – how do they do it?
While all of the major search engines use different algorithms, the end goal of all three is the same: to provide the searcher with the most relevant results available. It is this one common thread that makes it possible for an SEO to rank a website highly across all the major engines. While there are a variety of factors at play and an even wider variation in the weight each of these factors are given – the possible variations that can produce relevant results are limited.
For example, if inbound links are given 0% weight then insignificant sites will rank highly for high-competition phrases. Many reputable companies such as Microsoft could lose rankings for their own names so links must and will always hold value. On the other hand, if links were to hold 100% weight then sp@mming the search engines would be a simple matter and so there are a limited number of possible variables in between these extremes that this factor can have, no matter which engine we are optimizing for.
That said, there are still three main engines with three distinct algorithms despite common requirements. To clarify how to optimize for all of them it’s easiest to discuss them individually first. Due to the way their algorithms work, it is best to expect rankings on MSN first, followed by Yahoo! and finally Google (I am assuming that the phrase is at least moderately competitive). For this reason, we will discuss them individually in that order.
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