What Is DuckDuckGo SEO And How To Optimize The Website

In the present time, every other website is in the long run of being discovered by the users, optimizing their websites for the search engines to grow organic traffic and giving the audience what they want and expect. Google, Bing, Yahoo are the most popular search engines where a lot of people optimize their websites but there are many small search engines like DuckDuckGo which are undoubtedly evolving rapidly since the time they started their operations.

In this blog, we will discuss DuckDuckGo SEO and how it can be optimized for your website.

DuckDuckGo Search Engine

Launched by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008 DuckDuckGo search engine’s topmost priority is to respect the privacy of its users. By not tracking the user’s searches and sharing or collecting personal information of its users DuckDuckGo promises to offer complete privacy and anonymity. The company mentions that it's a bad experience if people at the search engines can view users' information. As per the company's research, most of its traffic came from mobile devices.

Hence, they came up with the mobile application DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser which functions the same as desktop browsers. You can search freely here, without worrying about privacy or your personal information being collected.

How to Optimize the Website for DuckDuckGo?

Here are a few tips you can follow to optimize the website for DuckDuckGo.

1. Update Website with Modern SEO Practices

This search engine aims to provide the most relevant information to its users. So you need to use modern SEO practices like:

• Content on the website should be well written and error-free.
• Keywords should be strategically used to attract traffic.
• Need to optimize web design for user experience.
• The loading time of the website should not take more than 3 seconds.
• The focus should also be on Technical SEO i.e. fixing bad meta tags, poor site structures, complicated URLs, etc.
• Your website should be optimized for other search engines also.

• Change Local Keyword Strategy

With its strict privacy policy, this search engine does not use geolocation data to get the search results. That's why local search response is not precise.

If you are a local company, you need to put a lot of effort to make it to the search results. In-depth keyword research needs to be conducted to have an idea about what the local users search for.

You can easily find these keywords on various online tools such as Demographics Pro.

• Create High-Quality Backlinks

When it comes to using DuckDuckGo obtaining high-quality backlinks plays a significant role. So, you must create high-quality backlinks. There are many factors to look forward to while getting high-quality backlinks. One such factor is the high domain authority website. Other factors you need to follow are relevance, Trust Flow, framing, and placement.

• Use Structured Data

DuckDuckGo loves structured data. It is a standardized format in which content is classified and presented. Apart from this, webpage information is provided. It saves the search engine from a lot of hard work as while going through this structured data the search engine gets an idea about the content on your website.

So if your website has structured data it will save a lot of time for the search engine.

Additionally, crawlers process the data faster as it understands the structured data in a better way.

• Optimize for Yahoo and Bing

DuckDuckGo pulls the answer from Yahoo and Bing. Hence, best practices for these search engines should be implemented as well. Best practices mean, XML sitemaps need to be reviewed whether it is error-free and accurate. Further, submit it to Bing Webmaster Tools.

You can use the Webmaster Tool to monitor the various performance parameters of your website. This includes crawl, health, and indexation of your website.

• Create Wikipedia like Backlinks

Wikipedia is one of the most popular open-source platforms where users have access to customize and control the content. It has high-quality backlinks and a low bounce rate. DuckDuckGo uses Yahoo as the primary source to fetch search data. Additionally, they trust & value crowdsourced websites such as Wikipedia.

So DuckDuckGo recommends getting backlinks from Wikipedia for higher rankings in the search results. You can also take no-follow links from Wikipedia as it also holds importance in the algorithm.

• Repurpose Content

DuckDuckGo understands that its users are searching for some relevant answers rather than links. Hence, it generates up to 400+ search results to get accurate information.

For appearing in the search results you need to repurpose your content. You can answer queries on various sources such as Stack Overflow, Quora, etc. The content on these platforms is ranked higher in the search results as the search engine aims to provide information to the users rather than links.

• Submit Website to Other Search Engines

If you want to rank your website on DuckDuckGo, you need to submit your website to various search engines. It can easily crawl your website from DuckDuckBot, it's a custom crawler. It finds information from 400+ directories such as Yahoo, Wikipedia, Bing, etc.

• Check Whether Website is Down

If you are not able to access a particular website, there might be a possibility that the website is down. In that case, you need to check whether the website is not accessible just from your computer or from other devices also. You can use websites such as is up. me to check for the same. It is a significant feature that will help in optimizing your website in case it's down.

• Add Bangs

Bangs are the shortcuts through which you are directed to a particular website when entered in the search bar. For instance, !Reddit, !Twitter etc. You can personalize your search query in bangs.

For example, if you are searching for notebooks on Amazon, you just type !a notebooks in the search bar.

• Focus on Local Search

As mentioned earlier, DuckDuckGo doesn't track the users and thus you are not aware of the locations of the visitors on your website. It makes use of Geo:: IP to identify locations through IP addresses. Hence, users need to enter the exact location to get personalized results. Thus,specific location information should be included in meta tags and content. Apart from this, you can add any nearby landmarks or streets.

• Set Realistic Resource Allocation

If you want to take full advantage of DuckDuckGo SEO you need to invest your time and resources into it. This platform is growing rapidly with its constant efforts, however, it is still behind Bing, Yahoo, and Google. So you don't need to spend more than 10% of your SEO services on this search engine. If privacy is the topmost priority of your company, then you can focus more on this platform.

• Use its Privacy Policy

With DuckDuckGo your browser apps and extensions are completely secure. An inbuilt blocker is also present on this platform. This blocker prevents ads from gathering your information regarding online activities. It also detects all the hidden networks and blocks them instantly. Users can also select the ads they wish to view.

• Opt Different Way to Advertise

Before launching a PPC campaign, you need to understand that control and customization won't be the same. This search engine will maintain users' privacy and safeguard them from the exploitation of advertising. However, the user should be aware of the fact that these ad campaigns are run through Bing and Yahoo.

Unlike Google, Yahoo and Bing DuckDuckGo search engines focus a lot more on privacy. Also on this search engine, you will get millions of queries daily.

It is suggested to optimize your website for DuckDuckGo. It will help you generate high traffic on your website.