I am going to talk about SEO for DuckDuckGo and what you should know about DuckDuckGo SEO
We are going to talk about improving your site performance and visibility on the DuckDuckGo search engine.
What you’re doing SEO wise for Google is going to be very similar for DuckDuckGo but there are a couple of big differences including
(i) how DuckDuckGo values backlinks versus
(ii) how Google values backlinks
(iii) geo searches and
(iv) local searches.
Tracking/Privacy
DuckDuckGo doesn’t track people it doesn’t know where people are so if you’re a local business trying to attract people you’re probably going to want to target keywords like product types, for example, portable neck fan or coffee machine, then include the town and State/County as opposed to just the product details. Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo doesn’t know exactly where you are.
DuckDuckGo Popularirty
The big players in the search engine game are Google, Yahoo and Bing, and let’s be real. Even though Bing and Yahoo may make it into that top three category at the end of the day like 99 of 100 people are using Google. That said DuckDuckGo has been rising in popularity and has been gaining a lot of users in recent years. In the past year it’s grown even more. The signs are that more people are more concerned about their online privacy and being tracked.
It’s no secret that websites and apps track us.
Breaches of privacy and Data
Facebook has from the beginning of their company been in trouble for violating people’s privacy. Some people are getting a $ 400 check for Google illegally using facial recognition technology on them. More recently in the news, the flow app was selling data to facebook and Google and other sources as well even though that they said they wouldn’t share private data.
So the flow app which is a period tracking app was telling facebook when your girlfriend or wife was ovulating. I am not sure if Mark Zuckerberg wants to market them when they’re more emotional at certain times of the month. It is no secret our data is being
harvested and sold and so a lot of people are becoming more concerned about this and are using search engines like DuckDuckGo.
It’s fair to say that people who use DuckDuckGo are probably a little bit more tech savvy. People who value their freedom and privacy.
You might want to put more emphasis on trying to rank in DuckDuckGo
Volume of DuckDuckGo Daily Traffic
In January 2021 DuckDuckGo hit 100 million users per day. For the first time DuckDuckGo has been attracting more users and will continue to grow as people become more aware of data and privacy concerns with Google and big tech
DuckDuckGo never stores,
- your personal information or
- search history
- they don’t track your ip address, unless you click on an ad in which case they need to track it to add attribution but other than that they don’t track your ip address your location or your search history
(iv) it doesn’t follow you with ads or track you across the internet
DuckDuckGo has a simple mantra no tracking, no ad targeting. It is just searching and the search engines growth is on a steady upward path.
Here DuckDuckGo’s market share pales in comparison to Google
yahoo and Bing however it is growing and depending on your customer base privacy may be very important to them and maybe they may be more likely to use DuckDuckGo.
So here we can see the market share of Google versus Bing versus Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. You can see DuckDuckGo has a very small percentage of the user base when it comes to search engines now
One of the downsides of DuckDuckGo Google spies on you uses your data sells your data tracks you all over the place and even though this is a negative if you’re concerned about privacy one of the nice things about it. It provides a very good searching experience.
Google knows you, it knows what you’re into, it knows what you’re searching about and therefore it can provide very good search results for you.
For example, when you log into your netflix account your suggestions on your netflix account are geared towards you.
Because Google doesn’t value your privacy and does track you they actually are able to provide a very good search experience so DuckDuckGo the positive about it is you know you have some privacy and anonymity on there
NOTE: However by not sharing data and not being tracked your search results are not going to be as targeted towards you and you have to be a little bit more thoughtful with your web searches so what you need to know about. How to be more visible. How to rank better on DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo gets its results from more than 400 sources ranging from crowdsourcing websites to its own crawler DuckDuckBot because it focuses on privacy it doesn’t know where the searcher is located and this is one of the big differences between Google and DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo because they don’t track me they may roughly know my geolocation they will probably know what state I am in they may even know like what region of the country or what city I am in but they don’t know exactly where I am at so it’s important when searching on DuckDuckGo to give some additional clues.
so why does this matter to you as an SEO marketer? trying to rank well in Google somebody who’s trying to get a business seen. You need to target keywords you know like “product name” and “brand name and product name together” with a general location within a City or District
SEO for DuckDuckGo
SEO for DuckDuckGo we’re basically going to be touching on four categories or bullet points here
- attract quality links that’s one of the differences too is how Google and DuckDuckGo look at backlinks and kind of score or gauge backlinks
- know your searcher’s intent
- optimize for Bing because DuckDuckGo pulls a lot of data from Bing and then
- claim and update your apple maps because DuckDuckGo uses apple maps. One of the reasons people use apple maps is that Apple doesn’t track you as much as Google. Also, Apple maps does not share data and is much more private. This helps with 1 above to attract quality links
This is, SEO 101 and regardless of which search engine you are trying to rank on backlinks are important.
1.Acquire quality links from reputable sites. –
Links should be helpful, high quality, and natural.
(i) Build links based on Bing’s best practices as opposed to Google’s best practices i.e. go for quantity over quality. Do not place as much importance on anchor text diversity.
(ii) Bing does count and factor social media links and social signals.
There are differences here when it comes to backlinks Google is going to value the quality of backlinks based on domain authority and page rank or page authority over just a sheer number of backlinks. Bing on the other hand which is what DuckDuckGo is using Bing. DuckDuckGo runs on top of Bing to an extent. Bing values quantity over quality – that does not mean you go buy a bunch of crappy backlinks off Fiverr for five dollars.
You should place more of an emphasis on a quantity of backlinks over quality or domain authority score of those backlinks. Bing /DuckDuckGo doesn’t place as much importance on anchor text (the words in a hyperlink). Bing also does factor social media links and social signals,
which is something Google does not, in relation to backlinks and SEO.
DuckDuckGo / Bing places more importance on social media links and social media signals.
2.Know your searcher’s search intent –
– because DuckDuckGo does not know a searcher’s exact location. Searchers will often adjust how they conduct their searches. A DuckDuckGo user might add a location-related word to a search query, for example, Attorney Chicago or lawyer Chicago Illinois as opposed to a Google search which might be Attorney or lawyer near me. Any SEO tool like SpyFu SEM Rush or others may help you understand more about how and what people are searching for.
With these tools, you can see what searchers are searching for,
how many searches there are in a month and
then you can decide which keywords to try to go after
3. Optimize for Bing –
– DuckDuckGo uses Bing to pull data from.
Always follow Bing SEO best practices
Submit an xml sitemap to Bing webmaster tools.
Use Bing webmaster tools to check your site’s health.
4.Claim and Update Apple’s Map Listing –
-if you haven’t already claimed your apple maps listing you can do so at:- https://mapsconnect.apple.com
Claim your business name, your business address, phone number, hours, business category, website, and social media profiles.
Keep DuckDuckGo on your radar much of SEO remains the same across different search engines however there are some small differences
such as
(a) Google valuing Page Rank and
(b) Site Quality over the sheer number of links with Bing and DuckDuckGo preferring a quantity over quality of links
Always remember – when searching add a location to search queries or target longer tail keywords that are location-based.
DuckDuckGo will continue to grow in popularity as Google, facebook and others abuse their position and invade people’s privacy.
Contributions
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/dec/12/duckduckgo-google-search-engine-privacy