My SEO is bad in Google, great in everything else!

I've been optimizing my client's site and making some good headway, getting a lot of #1 rankings for key phrases in Yahoo, MSN, Altavista and AOL. But the only keywords in Google where I'm cracking the top 100 are the highly geotargeted ones.

This can't be purely a competition issue, because otherwise why would I be doing so well in the other search engines? Are there some parameters for which Google is known to score sites very differently from all these others?

Bottom line - how can I be so bad in Google and so good in the other sites?

Thanks.

Google relies on off-page optimization alot more than the other search engines. On yahoo a highly optimized page can take the number one spot with very few links. However, with google you need a strong link campaign to climb the serps.

a blend of on-site and off-site works best for google.

if you are doing multi-keyword attack then it can take a bit of time to see your work.

I've seen this lately, I have several sites which wehere targetting 2-3 keywords with the homepages and just now, after more than 1 year, they started to show up on page one on Google for their keywords.

Take note they have different ranking algorithms. For google, in my own experience. Here is my advice:
1. They rely on anchor text to determine relevance. So use keywords in the anchor text.
2. They rely on linking page relevance or theming with your site as well as the keywords. So find relevant link with relevant sites in your own category. For example, if your page is about songs. Then invite links from music sites and music category directories.
3. They rely heavily on the Title. So use the keywords in your title.
4. They believed that legitimate documents attract backlinks slowly. So it means, build your links slowly.
5. Have patience.

My last advice is important. It takes some time to rank in google because they consider link aging. THe age of the links also is important. Legitimate links are the ones that exist for a long time. As time progresses, you ranks will slowly increase.

Remember to optimize the onpage factors also. They put importance on the keywords placed in header tags. And in my own experience it is easier to rank with keywords in it.

Hope this helps.

This is incorrect. Let your links build naturally. If you write some content that is good enough to attract links quickly there is no harm in that.

Emerson, this has been argued here before. Just because you found an obscure paragraph from an old patent does not mean you should be spreading this nonsense around to the people just learning SEO.