BEYOND GOOGLE - THE VALUE OF ADDING YAHOO & BING

While it's true that the majority of search clickthrough traffic will come from the SE giant Google, it's amazing that so many people (and even a lot of SEO companies) seem to automatically dismiss the other main search engines such as Yahoo and Bing.

From July 2010 figures from comScore, SE usage of the main three in the U.S. was recorded as:

GOOGLE: 66% -- YAHOO!: 17% -- BING: 11%

So if you submit to Google only, you're ignoring a potential of 28% (Yahoo & Bing combined) in search clickthroughs [potential customers and sales]

Now, if you follow your site stats closely, you'll probably see the actual Google resulting traffic as much higher (depending on your specific site and targeting), but let's go to an extreme and say only 10% of combined clickthroughs came to your site from Yahoo and Bing. Many people say those figures aren't worth wasting time on, but does that really make business sense?

Let's look at a (silly) example if you were running a (physical) retail store:

As a store owner, you noticed one day that around 90% of the people who visited your store wore green shirts, while only 10% of customers wore either red or blue shirts. Would it make sense to say "hmmmm, we shouldn't waste our time with anybody not wearing a green shirt". Remember, not everybody wearing the green is automatically coming in to buy -- and ignoring the others means if you didn't serve them then you didn't get the sale from the money they did want to spend at your shop.

Just like real people, search users shop with different preferences. For whatever reason, some may simply prefer using Yahoo or Bing instead of Google. Does that mean you don't want their business? Guess what -- maybe your competitor down the street saw you turning away that business and realized that could be a great sale for them to grab, so if you're going to throw it away, somebody will gladly take the customers for themselves.

The strength in business and retail success isn't in finding a new customer every day, but rather building a solid repeat business from loyal customers. These are the people who will shop (and spend) more often at your shop, plus recommend you to friends, relatives, and other acquaintances because they like what you have to offer.

They actually bring you more business instead of you having to hunt for new clients on your own – you're spending more time making the sale instead of spending all your time on the road trying to find somebody new to sell to.

Sadly, many websites approach the search engine battle by placing all their focus on just Google because it's the most frequently used engine for searches. What's really crazy is that it really doesn't take much longer to also have your site rank in Yahoo and Bing as well.