SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOGOptimize Your Site For Bing
With all the changes that were made in Google, decimating EMDs and PMDs its clear that you cannot put all your eggs in the same basket. You NEED to also consider optimization for Bing and Yahoo! also lets not forget social bookmarking, article directory submissions along with other SEO techniques to drive visitors to your site(s).
First questions is how much search market share does Bing have compared to Google? Bing is definitely not as big as Google is – but it is catching up. According to comScore Google still has 66% of the search market, with Microsoft sites following at a distant 15.9% followed by Yahoo! sites at 12.8% then the Ask Network at 3.2%
Consider this:
More than 17 billion explicit core searches were conducted in August, with Google Sites ranking first with 11.3 billion. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.2 billion, Ask Network with 550 million and AOL, Inc. with 292 million.
Google still counts, so you need to play by their rules no matter how difficult their rules are right now, or become down the road. Their goal is to improve the user experience and quite possibly have spam sites pay to get traffic rather than getting organic traffic – you could spend hundreds of dollars and not see any return through affiliate programs; but the better option would be to set-up squeeze pages to capture the users name and e-mail address then try the direct method of sales. Not an easy task as users are becoming smarter. You also need to consider who is searching for information to determine whether you are going to get that persons name and e-mail address. A lot at play and there is no easy answer.
The following is from SiteProNews:
Bing Search Engine Optimization Techniques
1) Manage Length of Your Content
Make your content longer than 300 words. According to SEO experts, Bing algorithms seem to place a higher value on content that is over 300 words. That means longer blog posts, more content on web pages and longer articles.
2) On-Page Tips for Bing
Optimize your title tags for your keywords and use unique tags on each page. You may be doing this already for Google and Yahoo. Keep it up. Bing really likes title tags and pays attention to them when indexing and ranking your page. If you haven’t been paying too much attention to them up until now, it’s time to start.
3) Bing Linking
Linking is always important in SEO. However, unlike Google, when doing SEO for Bing, pay more attention to building backlinks from highly relevant websites. Also, Bing really likes outbound links and gives a bit more weight than the other search engines do.
4) Keyword Targeting
Bing’s own FAQ page suggests that you target no more than two keywords per page. We suggest you follow this rule. Usually you will want to target one main keyword you are trying to get ranked for and a more long-tail keyword which contains your main keyword in it.
5) Meta Tags
You may have let your meta tags slide over the years because rumor has it Google doesn’t really pay much attention to them. However, Bing recommends you use unique description tags on each page.
6) Continue All Other Good SEO Practices
Good SEO for Bing does have some differences than Google, but good SEO practices still need to be followed too. For example:
* Use H1 tags
* Use text navigation links
* Use keywords in your URL
There’s a bit of disagreement between experts. There are some reports that indicate Bing places value on longevity. The older your website, the more respect Bing seems to want to give you. However, other sources cite that younger, newer sites, have the advantage. Regardless, whether you’re a brand new site or a website that’s been around for years, put the above practices in place and be patient.
As Bing continues to evolve you will also see them tighten the rules to provide a better user experience for searchers, and more quality sites for advertisers to advertise on.
The solution is that there is no easy solution. You need to continue reading and understand how the search engines are evolving – one thing is certain, if Google becomes the only play in town we’ll all be at their mercy; as it is right now they are the biggest and will flex their muscle and while Microsoft/Yahoo! are making gains they are still far behind.
image optimization idea is missing in this list
Great article! Too many people will forget there are some other searchengines beside Google. And they are worth to be considered also
This all help me a lot for getting ranking in Bing hope that you will find good stuff
I’ve been able to get fairly high rankings in a short amount of time with some of my sites, by knowing what are the most important factors for ranking on a keyword. These are ordered with the first being the most important.
1) Anchor Text
2) Pagerank
3) Title
4) Age
5) Keywords in URL/domains
1)Anchor text is harder to manipulate and often tells what 3rd parties think of your website. So Google and other search engines plays a high importance. There are websites out there with no major incidence of the keywords in their title or content, yet they rank for that keyword. This is ONLY because of a large amount of links with the anchor text of those keywords.
2) Google only cares about weighting certain backlinks with pagerank, but Google sends most search engine hits so you should care. It also allows you determine which pages give you “the most bang for your buck” for link juice.
3) Most websites over time have learned to not use a brand name as their title but instead put in a generic term or frequently searched keyword phrase.
I would like to add one more thing in this list Use Schema.org. Recently main search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) developed a jointly supported protocol called Schema.org which allows webmasters to mark up their content by using special tags in the HTML code. It will help search engines to understand and rank the pages easier & better, develop new services and present the information in a more user friendly way.
Hi
I recently come up with a blog based in distance learning MBA in India. I’ve been trying to get some organic ranking in major search engines like Google & Bing. I’ve developed quite a few backlinks from relevant websites but still no luck. I think Domain Age is another major factor contributes to rank higher in SERP.
Domain age is also another important factor, so you can consider it as well.
A few months ago, Microsoft launched their new search engine: Bing. Since it’s launch, there are many discussions and debates about whether Bing will overtake Yahoo and Google. Although it is still very early to talk about Bing disposing the big 2, the future seems good after several good reviews about Bing.