GOOGLE IS THE SEO BOSS

It Is Important to Understand Google's Dominance and How It Impacts Your Traffic. Google IS the SEO Boss.

Google rules. With an iron fist, Google has staked its claim as ruler of the search engine world. It relentlessly dominates all comers, even the other big boys like Yahoo and Bing. Here are a few things to realize that will help you understand the importance of making Google and its spiders happy:

Google Is the SEO Boss: Google Is the Big Dog

As recently as 2009, Google claimed between 63.3% and 72.1% of the total search engine market. It is massively successful. All the other search engines in the U.S.A. are competing for the other 1/3 to 1/4 of the search market.

This is why making Google happy matters. The hard facts mean that, in order to do well with the search engines, you have to select terms for which you can rank well in Google.

Here are the numbers:

Approximately 40% of the people who search for a term will click on the first result returned. Another 30-40% will click on either the 2nd or 3rd returned result. The other 20-30% of the traffic will be split among the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th positions. No significant traffic (10% or less) will find a search result that isn't displayed on the first page. Those are the tough facts.

So, if you don't optimize a webpage for a keyword that you can rank on the first page of Google with, forget about getting much, if any, website traffic for that keyword until you make it to the first result page (top 10). Then, forget about getting a lot of traffic for it until you make it into the top 3.

Even if you rank in position number 4, you will end up splitting seven ways the 20% of traffic that doesn't go to the top 3.

Google Is the SEO Boss: The Other Guys

Bing and Yahoo! do have traffic-generating potential. But, with around one third of the total market, Google is the SEO boss and will likely remain the boss for the foreseeable future.

However, 33% of billions of searches is not insignificant. Be sure to submit your URL and Sitemap to both Bing and Yahoo! as well as Google (AltaVista now uses Yahoo!). All of the other search engines likely won't generate much traffic for you, but it can't hurt to submit to them also. Just don't spend too much time on such an endeavor after you get your site submitted to the top three.

Google Is the SEO Boss: International Implications

Google is the SEO boss in the U.S.A., but that isn't the case all over the world. Multiple countries are not Google-owned. Most notably, China is not Google-owned. They have had a presence there, but Baidu is their biggie. You can use Google translate to translate Baidu's URL submission page and try to get some Chinese traffic.

Naturally, it will be more difficult for non-English-speaking individuals to get value out of an English-only website. But, they can use Google translate also, and more and more of the world is learning English as a second language.

If you have international visions for your content, you can see where Google has the highest and lowest market dominance and selectively target search engines in other countries for URL submission. You can check Google's international market dominance here.

Google Is the SEO Boss: Conclusion

Google rules, but not everywhere and not totally. It is important for Americans to play the Google game. Your traffic is going to come from Google, primarily. But, don't discount all the other avenues available for traffic generation.

For more, go back to SEO Strategy. To make improvements that can increase your traffic and overall site appeal, go to Website Improvements.