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The SEO Fool's Errand For The SEO Fool 
By: Stoney deGeyter 2007-09-18 The other day I received an email from a client noting that some of his Yahoo rankings have slipped as of late. They are still ranking strong on Google as well as MSN and... ...heck, many of their Yahoo rankings are still very strong. But there was, in fact, some slippage and the client was concerned. Well, first we know that there is more to web marketing than top rankings. In fact rankings are just a small piece of the bigger web marketing pie. I know that and you know that, but for whatever reason, we all still have to deal with clients that refuse to accept that. But thats a story for another post. So what do you do in this situation? I know for a fact that the clients business has seen 100-200% growth year over year since we started working with them oh-so long ago. They obviously see the big picture, but they still come back looking at rankings. And Yahoo rankings at that. Ok, so lets put the question aside about whether the client should focus on rankings or not. We know better, but theyll do it anyway. Instead, lets come at this from another angle. Across the board rankings: Possible, but not plausible From experience, we know that its not that uncommon to rank semi well across the board on all the top five search engines. Im looking at several rankings for this client that are in the top five on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. But its not a majority. Looking deeper I see some places where they hold a #1 spot on Yahoo and Google but nowhere to be found on MSN. Similarly they also have keywords in top spots on Google and MSN and way down to page five for Yahoo. And even in a few places we see great rankings on Yahoo and MSN and piss poor showings on Google. Is this the norm? Well, apparently it is. According to a recent study by the folks at Dogpile, there is less than a 1% overlap of top rankings between Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. That may or may not be surprising. After all we are talking about four different algorithms here. But what really struck me were these stats:
Its interesting to note that Google has the lowest uniqueness value of each of the top four engines, with MSN being the highest:
Chasing your tail - or just chasing rankings? I politely explained to my client that 1) well analyze the situation and do what we can do bring the Yahoo rankings back up. And we will. But I also pointed out that 2) we dont want to make changes to gain Yahoo ranking that may cause him to lose Google rankings. Of course if the roles were reversed, if they had good Yahoo but poor Google rankings, we would upset the apple cart. But Google rankings are far more valuable than Yahoo. Sacrificing Google rankings for Yahoo rankings is just bad business sense. So after analyzing the situation, what do we do if we feel we cant improve the Yahoo rankings without disrupting the Google rankings? Nothing. Because we all know its not about rankings, its about business. A lower ranking on Google will most likely bring them more business than a higher ranking on Yahoo. (Your results may vary, contact your SEO for more details and take the most appropriate action as necessary.) So in this case the proper course of action is to do nothing at all whatsoever. Except to go back to the client and try to get them, once again, to look at the big picture and not individual rankings. Anything else is just a fools errand. Comments Tag: Google, Yahoo, SEO SEM Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Read this article and more at the E-Marketing Performance Blog. Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing (www.PolePositionMarketing.com), a search optimization marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook. |
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