Beyond Google: Why I Finally Started SEO for Other Search Engines

Google hit one of my projects hard for the third time since 2008. I lost a lot of traffic again. I worked with a few hundred websites throughout my career, so the ratio is around 1%.

The first time was the most painful when I used old methods of buying backlinks with a simple strategy – to double backlinks to specific URLs that my competitors had. That worked great, but in April 2012, Google dropped my website and many others with a new algorithm Penguin.

That was a turning point in learning about White Hat SEO and adapting to personalized outreach, PR, and other complex methods.

The second time, Google hit a weight loss supplements website with a new algorithm, E-A-T, that changed to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expert, Authority, and Trust) for a while. That happened in 2019. This project hired many rewriters who intended to write reviews without experience using these products. Yeah, AI was not there at that time.

The third time happened in March 2024 with a new Google Core Update. This time, everything was different – this website had no bad backlinks or lousy content.

Our authors have also published their content on Forbes, Investopedia, MSN, and many other recognizable websites to understand this better. We earned backlinks and mentions on CNN, Yahoo, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and several other hundred high-authority websites.

If it was simple to explain what was going on the first two times, but the last left our team confused. We tried to improve UX, resolve API issues, and fix some regular bugs, but the owner abandoned this project.

My biggest surprise was that Google returned this traffic in December 2024, or 9 months later. Because the project was not updated for a while, many pages lost API access, and content was broken in many parts. However, Google still ranks this content with all these errors.

I can only assume that Google found that new websites in the top 10 provided worse UX and user satisfaction, which is why this project got traffic back.

That lesson taught me I can’t rely on one channel even if everything looks right. I’d been pushing my clients to diversify beyond Google with Bing, DuckDuckGo, and even YouTube, the second search engine.

When Google traffic had tanked, the conversion rate on “secondary” engines was even higher. The leads were better quality, too. In this article, I’ll teach you how to optimize for all search engines and repurpose channels that bring additional traffic.

Keep reading; the best part is coming.

The Actual Humans Using Different Search Engines

Let me shatter a myth: Bing users aren’t just people too technologically inept to change their default settings. They’re:

• My dad, who genuinely prefers the Bing interface (and reminds me at every family party)
• Liam is in accounting, whose corporate laptop restricts him to Microsoft products
• That guy at the coffee shop with the Microsoft Surface is all-in on the ecosystem.

I spoke with over 700 marketing professionals on the Unmiss podcast, who spend $10-100K monthly on Google SEO. Some completely ignore the 15% of searchers who use other engines. It’s like deliberately ignoring 15% of the market because they shop at Target instead of Walmart.

That stuck with me.

DuckDuckGo: Not Just for Conspiracy Theorists Anymore

My buddy Steve switched to DuckDuckGo after the Facebook privacy scandals. He’s not some tinfoil hat guy – he’s a regular dude who got creeped out by how much Google knew about him.

Steve’s not alone. DuckDuckGo users have exploded in recent years. They’re not “paranoid” – they’re privacy-conscious. And there are millions of them.

How DDG Actually Works (Because It’s Weird)

DuckDuckGo doesn’t crawl the whole internet like Google does. That’d cost billions. Instead, they combine and blend from hundreds of sources – Bing’s a big one. Their crawler fills some gaps, but it’s not trying to index everything.

This creates a different ballgame for getting traffic:

• Those backlinks you’ve been sweating over? They matter way less here.
• Your on-page content? WAY more important.
• Those featured snippets at the top? Gold mines if you can grab ’em.

Stuff That Moves the Needle on DuckDuckGo

After testing like crazy with different clients, I doubled DDG traffic for a few projects in two months. Here’s what works:

1. Remember in 2008 when SEO was more straightforward? DuckDuckGo is like that. Many websites have a labyrinth structure. Reorganize it so the pages are never more than two clicks from the homepage.
2. Change cute but useless page titles like “Your Journey Begins Here” to add keywords and describe the content better with our free headline quality calculator.
3. Analyze meaningful metrics that matter instead of trying to optimize +1,000 less important! No wonder it loaded like it was on dial-up. Cut them down to the essentials.
4. Made privacy policy readable for actual humans (not just lawyers).
5. Remove features you don’t use, such as asking for locations or Facebook pixels.
6. My all-time favorite DuckDuckGo win: We created a simple trading calculator with AI API. Nothing fancy – just clean, fast, and valuable. It started as an instant answer and now drives more traffic than many expensive PPC campaigns.

Most multi-functional SEO tools don’t share ranking on DuckDuckGo because 90% of their customers never even check their rankings on anything but Google. It’s free traffic they’re ignoring.

Bing: The Search Engine That Signs Your Paychecks

Last Christmas, I watched my aunt search for gift ideas on Bing. When I asked why she used it, she shrugged and said, “It came with the computer.”

That’s the thing about Bing – it’s the default for millions of Microsoft users who never change their settings. These people aren’t unicorns; they’re everywhere, especially in corporate environments.

What Bing Cares About

After running tests across dozens of sites, here’s what I’ve seen work:

• Bing LOVES official-looking sites. That .gov, .edu, or .org domain extension? Gold.
• They’re way more literal with keywords. While Google gets that “canine nutrition” and “dog food” are related, Bing wants to see “dog food” if that’s what someone searched for.
• LinkedIn signals matter a ton (which is no surprise since Microsoft owns both).

Getting Bing to Notice You

1. Log Into Their Toolset. I did an audit last month where the client had never even created a Bing Webmaster Tools account. It took 15 minutes to set up, and we found issues Google never flagged. My favorite Bing WMT story: A client’s site was submitted to Google Search Console months earlier but wasn’t fully indexed. We submitted to Bing directly and saw pages indexed within hours. HOURS!
2. Optimize images. I added proper alt text to destination photos, including screenshots – Bing traffic increased by 22%, while Google barely changed.
3. Link building for universities. This one’s a bit sneaky, but it works: a single .edu link did more for Bing rankings than dozens of regular backlinks.

I spoke with Fabrice Canel on my podcast; who told me many SEOs optimize for metrics Bing doesn’t even use. All algorithms are more straightforward than people think, rewarding sites that clearly show they’re about.”

YouTube: The Second Largest Search Engine Nobody Optimizes For

I had this moment that blew my mind. We spent a lot of money on our website content and four times less on YouTube videos, but the results were different – most leads are coming from our YouTube channel.

Wait, what?

Most of us are so obsessed with Google that we forget that YouTube is technically the world’s second-largest search engine. It processes over 3 billion searches monthly – more than Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and every other traditional search engine combined.

Yet almost nobody treats it like a search engine. YouTube also prefers fresh content, which is very important for new channels. If SEO takes years, we get a million views and sales in the first months.

Who’s Searching on YouTube?

YouTube’s search audience is wildly different from traditional search engines:

• They’re typically much earlier in the buying journey
• They’re looking for demonstrations, not just information
• They have longer attention spans (average session time is 40+ minutes!)
• They skew younger (though the 35+ demographic is growing fastest)

My client, Joel Lim, runs a forecast trading platform. “People searching Google want to know crypto price predictions,” he told me. “People finding us on YouTube want to see how we get these results – strategies, indicators, and other calculations.”

How YouTube Search Works

I have been filming videos on YouTube since 2016, which is the foundation of a sales funnel. YouTube search isn’t just about relevance – it’s about engagement prediction. We’re trying to guess what videos will keep someone watching, not just answer their query.

This creates an entirely different optimization game:

• Watch time matters more than any other metric
• Audience retention is critical (YouTube knows exactly when viewers bail)
• User signals (likes, comments, subscribes) carry far more weight than in Google

What Moves the Needle on YouTube

After experimenting with dozens of client channels, here’s what consistently works:

1. Headlines and Thumbnails Matter. My designers use AI Photoshop to draw high-quality thumbnails to catch attention, and my writers use our free headline calculator to make our headlines stand out. Nobody knows how valuable your video is before it clicks.
2. Hook Viewers in the First 15 Seconds YouTube’s internal data shows most viewers decide whether to continue watching within the first 15 seconds. My trading client started each video with a 30-second intro sequence. We changed it to share the main topic in the beginning without greetings and other useless data. Audience retention jumped from 27% to 48%.
3. Film short and long videos. Short videos can cover broad topics to acquire a loyal audience, but long videos should touch the bottom of the sales funnel. Some channels ignore shorts, but it’s a big mistake because getting high engagement depends on that.

I never filmed for YouTube – I always filmed for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other accounts. Repurposing content brings strong brand recognition and additional sales.

How Not to Lose Your Mind Doing All This

Look, I get it. You’re already drowning in SEO tasks. The last thing you need is to optimize for four different search engines.

Here’s my real-world approach:

1. Check Who Already Likes You Last week, I discovered a client was getting 8% of their traffic from Bing, but those visitors bought at nearly double the rate of their Google traffic. Where are we focusing now?
2. Pick Your Battle My rule: Start with whichever alternative engine aligns best with your audience — selling privacy software. DuckDuckGo. B2B products to corporate clients? Bing all day.
3. Don’t Try to Boil the Ocean. About 70% of good SEO practices work across all engines. Start there. Then, add the engine-specific tweaks one at a time. We usually start with just ONE alternative engine, get that working, and then consider adding others.

Conclusion

Google dropped my projects three times, and the last time, the project was abandoned. Hubspot and Forbes have the same experience, but these companies are still at the top in their niches.

The truth? Search is more significant than Google. Always has been.

Optimize for all search engines and repurpose content on social media, where over 3 billion people spend time daily. If a new update hits you, other channels cover that.