The Top Sites and Search Engines to Focus Your SEO Efforts On

Intro

If you’re on the brink of coming up with a new SEO strategy, then you may be wondering where your efforts would be best expended. In this guide, we’re going to discuss six of the sites that you can focus on to ensure that you get the best possible results out of your SEO efforts.

Google

It would be pretty hard to start this list off with any site other than Google, especially when you consider that they hold over 86% of the search engine market share. Google’s parent company is worth over 1 trillion dollars, making Google one of the most valuable businesses in the world.

Google doesn’t only power their own search engine, but they also provide plenty of other sites with the tools they need to allow people to conduct searches. For example, Ask.com uses the Google search algorithm to provide its visitors with results, and they’re one of countless sites that does so.

The main reason to focus your efforts on Google is because of the huge potential audience that you can reach. Being at the top of a Google results page for the right keyword can almost automatically change your business’s prospects for the better, but it will take a lot of hard work to get there.

Also, since everyone else wants one of these spots, if you’re trying to get into the paid search game, you’re going to be spending huge sums of money on buying those slots. While some argue that Google is making it harder for people to click through due to things like featured snippets, research has shown that these moves are actually encouraging people to click through.

Amazon

Most people forget that Amazon has been around since 1995, especially when you consider the astronomical growth that the company has experienced over the course of the past couple of decades. Even fewer people remember that Amazon started off as a simple bookstore.

Since then, Amazon has become a storefront for literally anything that isn’t a restricted product. What does this have to do with SEO? Research shows that Amazon beats Google in one crucial area: shopping. Nearly 50% of all searches for online shopping began on Amazon last year, whereas only 22% started on Google.

Much like with Google, one of the huge advantages of working on Amazon is that your business will be able to reach a massive audience, scaling way further than many other online shopping platforms. The thing about Amazon is that it’s one of the best conversion points available.

You can have the best content in the world and draw in countless people with your SEO, but unless you have a place where people are confident in buying your products, it will all be for nothing. Of course, the downside to Amazon is that it doesn’t do anything for businesses that are service-based.

Youtube

While most people look at Youtube as a video streaming site, they often forget that it also functions as a search engine for those videos. After all, when you type a query into the Youtube search bar and videos pop up, the exact same thing is going on behind the scenes as with a Google search.

This comes as little surprise when you consider the fact that Google owns Youtube. There are other similarities with Google, especially when it comes to the reason why you’d want to use Youtube above other sites when optimizing your SEO. For example, the huge possible audience that you can reach out to.

The weaknesses of working with Youtube are also in line with those that exist in Google’s ecosystem. Namely, it will cost you a lot to pay for paid ads due to the huge amount of competition that you’ll come across and it will simply be harder to stand out due to the huge number of people on the platform.

Yandex

Yandex is the largest search engine in Russia, and it has been called “the Russian Google”. This site is used for nearly 50% of the searches in Russia, and it is growing outside of it, too. Yandex stands for “yet another indexer”, and it is growing far faster than many of Google’s other competitors.

The advantage of focusing your SEO efforts on Yandex is that there is a smaller crowd to compete with, making paid ads more affordable and making it easier to be recognized. Unfortunately, since Yandex’s adoption is a little slower outside of Russia, it will be a little harder to see results from it.

Bing

Bing has grown astronomically over the course of the past decade, and most people didn’t take it seriously until recently. Starting off with about 10% of the market share, Bing has grown to the point that it has nearly 25% of the search engine market share, and it has worked as a vehicle for Microsoft’s ad platform.

Microsoft Ads is supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to Google Adwords, and while it might not be as well-established as its spiritual predecessor, it is growing fast. This rate of growth is a key part of the advantages that Bing holds over Google.

The best thing about Bing is that it is using future technology to potentially surpass Google, especially when you consider Microsoft’s heavy involvement on the AI front. Also, in spite of a lower rate of conversions, the ROI you can get out of Bing can be a lot more impressive.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network in the world, and most people seem to forget the search function that Facebook possesses. Due to its huge number of users, Facebook has 2 billion searches per day conducted on its domain, which is a larger number of searches than even Bing.

As with other large search engines like Google and Youtube, Facebook has a huge user base that will potentially allow you to strike gold if you play your cards right. Unfortunately, Facebook is an expensive platform to work on, so you’ll have a smaller ROI than elsewhere.