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Before you can start to optimize your website for Google, Bing or Yahoo it is important to gain a better understanding of each search engine. When you know what they are looking for and also know what they do not want to see, it becomes easier to focus your search engine optimization campaigns. It has been reported that the organic search results on Yahoo will be powered by Bing as from August/September 2010. Only time will tell how this will influence keyword rankings on Yahoo.

Let us firstly have a look at the latest report data regarding the size of the market share that these search engines account for. The market share data that is used in this article has been obtained from the June 2010 report published by comScore. It is very important to be aware of changes in the market place and comScore is a trusted and reputed provider of digital market intelligence.

Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches in June 2010, up 3 percent from May 2010. Google Sites accounted for 10.3 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.1 billion (up 7 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (up 8 percent), Ask Network with 584 million (up 1 percent), and AOL LLC with 368 million (up 2 percent).

It is very clear from the June 2010 comScore report that Google, Bing and Yahoo are the 3 search engines that you need to focus on. Between them they account for 94.2% of all searches conducted by Americans in June 2010. Google, Bing and Yahoo have clear guidelines for webmasters to follow and we will be taking a closer look at the content guidelines of each search engine.

With the Yahoo organic search result being powered by Bing, optimizing for Bing has become very important.  It is vital for you to know all of the technical guidelines for each search engine and to ensure that your website design complies with these guidelines. If the search engine spiders can’t crawl your website they can’t index or rank it.

Google Website Content Guidelines:

• Every page should be reachable from at least one static link
• Offer a site map to your visitors
• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number
• Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content
• Include the words that users would use to find your site in your content
• Try to use text instead of images. The search engine spiders can’t read images
• Make sure that your title elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate
• Check for broken links and correct HTML code
• Be careful when using dynamic pages (URL contains a "?" character), not all spiders read dynamic pages
• Make pages primarily for users not search engines

Bing Website Content Guidelines:

• Include words that users might use as search queries in the visible part of your text
• Limit all web pages to a reasonable size, pages with no images should be 150kb or less
• Make sure that each web page is accessible by at least one static link
• Do not put the text that you want indexed within images
• Add a sitemap because links that are embedded in menus, list boxes and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers
• Each web page should only be from 1 to 3 clicks away from the default web page
• Earn several high quality and authoritative inbound links

Yahoo Website Content Guidelines:

• Create unique and original content of genuine value
• Your web pages should be designed primarily for humans
• Use hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable
• Make use of metadata (including titles and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page
• Practise good web design in general
• Include a HMTL or XML sitemap accessible with a link from your welcome page

What not to do:

• Do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your page's ranking
• Do not use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc
• Avoid hidden text or hidden links
• Do not use cloaking or sneaky redirects
• Do not load pages with irrelevant keywords
• Do not create multiple pages, sub domains or domains with substantially duplicate content
• Do not create pages with malicious behaviour, such as phishing and installing viruses
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines
• If your site participate in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value
• Do not create pages that harm the accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Do not create sites with numerous and unnecessary virtual host names
• Do not use techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your web page.

When you follow the guidelines provided by the search engines, it is possible to achieve high search engine rankings. You should research the search engines that you want to target with your keyword search optimization, prior to implementing your SEO campaign. It is possible to have keywords that rank high in all three of the search engines simultaneously if you maintain a focused keyword optimization campaign and follow the guidelines that are provided.