While DuckDuckGo might only still have a small share of the search engine market, it is growing rapidly with an increase of users who appreciate the option of being able to search for what they need online without being tracked or advertised to as a result. With an easy Chrome extension that allows you to continue using your Chrome browser to make private searches, DuckDuckGo offers the anonymity and privacy that users want with minimal disruption to their online habits. This search engine is a hybrid platform, meaning that it pulls results from a range of outside sources like Yahoo!, Bing, and Wikipedia. So, how do you go about optimizing your website content for DuckDuckGo?

No Location Searches:

First of all, it’s important to understand the searchers that you are targeting on DuckDuckGo. People who use this search engine tend to be more concerned about their privacy and want to use a search engine that isn’t geotagging their location or using their searches to bombard them with advertisements. Because of this, there are some changes to how searches are made that are worth being aware of when optimizing for DuckDuckGo.

‘Near me’ and location searches, for example, are not as frequent since DuckDuckGo does not know the searcher’s location and therefore cannot pull local results in the same way that Google does. To get local results, searches will need to include a geo-qualifier like the name of a city or town, so it’s worth reflecting this in your content.

Mobile-Friendliness:

DuckDuckGo takes things just as seriously as Google when it comes to providing a great user experience and ensuring that searchers are presented with high-quality results. Just like when optimizing for Google, it’s important to remember that many DuckDuckGo searchers are going to be looking up answers to their questions using a mobile device, and your website will rank higher if it’s fully responsive and looks great on any screen size.

Fast Loading Time:

Just like Google, DuckDuckGo won’t rank your website highly if it takes a long time to load. Fast loading times are integral to the user experience online and most users won’t wait more than just a few seconds for a website to load before they give up and look elsewhere instead. The good news is that if you have already optimized for Google by ensuring that your website loads quickly, you should have no problem with DuckDuckGo.

Repurpose Your Content:

DuckDuckGo takes data from hundreds of sources to provide the most accurate results. It wants to provide searchers with the answers that they are looking for rather than general links, so will often rank sites such as Quora, Stack Exchange, and Reddit quite highly. Repurposing your content by posting on these popular sites with a link back to your website can help you be found more easily by searchers who use DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo is growing in popularity as an alternative search engine that offers more privacy than Google. To take advantage of the increasing number of web users looking to protect their privacy by using this search engine, keep these simple optimization tips in mind.