Top 10 UK Search Engines

When you check your listing on a browser which search engine do you use? A simple question but important because not all search engines are equal. According to the latest figures the top 10 UK Search Engines are:

1. Google UK
2. Yahoo UK
3. Ask Jeeves UK
4. Freeserve UK
5. Yell UK
6. Alta Vista UK
7. MSN UK
8. NTL World
9. Tiscali
10. Mirago

According to 2009 April 04 figures from Hitwise, the percentages of visitors looks like this:

1. www.google.com 72.68%
2. search.yahoo.com 16.29%
3. www.ask.com 3.96%
4. search.msn.com 3.52%
5. www.live.com 2.15%

These are stats for the USA but it is clear that Google has a similar market share here in the UK, in fact some UK stats suggest Google's market share is closer to 85%.

So what does this mean for your website marketing and SEO campaigns?

1. Get listed on Google
2. Get listed on Google
3. Get listed on Google

Of course you don't ignore the rest, especially Yahoo, but getting a good ranking on Google is a major priority.

And remember as well as the search engines listed above there are many specialist online directories and these could also be important to your business website.

Optimisation is Not a One-off Event

Having an optimised website in this day and age is essential. But what does this really mean? When I talk about an 'optimised' site I consider:

• Keywords researched and defined
• Pages designed to target defined keywords
• Incoming links established from other relevent websites

I could go into more detail but that, in essence, is it.

So once that's all in place we can sit back and relax? Yes?
Well possibly, but most probably, No you can't.

The web changes daily, hourly in fact, so if you want your site to stay in a reasonable position then you will need to nudge it along. It's a bit like pushing a car from a standing start. The first bit is really hard, getting it moving from zero. But once it's going you just need to keep the pressure on to maintain the momentum. If you stop pushing then the car will gradually slow to a standstill.

A website works in a similar way. Putting in the optimisation work at the beginning will give it a boost, but do nothing after that and you are a little further along the road but at a standstill.

So what do you need to do?

• Keep link building
• Update the pages
• Review you keywords
• Blog and/or Twitter what you are doing
• Review performance through Analytics

For a small busy company it's difficult to get to all this . . . which is why many employ an experienced SEO specialist