After what seems like an age Bing and Yahoo are now at last starting to share their search functions. Over the coming months there will be further integration between the two search engines. This combination has resulted in a reported 25% of search engine market share which is something that affiliates should not ignore. Now is the time to start optimising your sites for Bing!
Google is still the clear market leader and continues to develop the users search experience. The simple fact is though that many webmasters neglect to optimise their pages for Bing, although obviously ranking on Bing can be much easier than Google for competitive key phrases. Let’s take a look at how to effectively SEO for Bing.
SEO For Bing – On-Page SEO
Get the basics right! Ensure you use H tags for titles, alt tags for images, plus of course ensure you use unique page titles, description meta tags and meta key words.
SEO For Bing – Bing Webmaster Tools
Sign up to MS Webmaster Tools then submit a sitemap so Bing knows your site exists. Don’t expect Bing’s Webmaster Tools to as informative as Google’s as it simply isn’t.
SEO For Bing – Canonical Requirements:
There is no doubt that Google is extremely good at determining a website’s Canonical URL even for websites not coded efficiently. Bing does not even support the Canonical tag and offers zero Canonical URL management in their Webmaster Tools. We will discuss this in more detail in a later article.
Google prefers 301 redirects but in all honesty a 302 will in most cases not cause major problems. In the case of Bing, if a website has a 302 Canonical redirect rather than a 301 then Bing will not follow the redirect. So ensure that for Canonical redirects you always use a 301.
SEO For Bing – Page Size:
Bing only caches the first 100k of most web pages with the reported range 95k – 105k. To counter this ensure that important aspects of the page content is place in the initial 95k, otherwise it will not be placed in to the Bing cache.
SEO For Bing – Backlink Requirements:
Google is the king in regards to indexing pages whilst Bing is simply miles behind. Google will happily index pages with poor link authority whilst Bing will not. Build links to pages that are not indexed in Bing. Seek out links on pages that are indexed in Bing as those that are not will not aid you to rank in Bing. In general a page needs at least one external website link to remain in the Bing index.
SEO For Bing – Domain Age
Just like Google, Bing greatly favours aged domains.
SEO For Bing – Back Links Considerations
We all know that to rank highly in Google you simply need quality links with anchor text that matches the key phrase you want to rank. A page with only a few lines of text that is not even optimised for the key phrase will rank in Google if it has enough quality links with the correct anchor text. Bing is completely different. The old school rule of “content is king” is completely true when optimising a page for Bing. A properly SEO page, full of relevant quality content, with quality back links from with many different pages indexed in Bing, with varied anchor text , will rank highly in Bing for multiple key phrase.
Goole is in effect a spammer’s paradise as many affiliates have noticed especially during the last few months. The spammer’s tactics that work so well in Google are less effective in Bing.
SEO For Bing – Build Backlinks On Pages With Relevant Titles & Content
Let’s say you are trying to rank for a phrase such as “pokerstars bonus code”. To increase rankings for Bing seek out pages that include “pokerstars bonus code” in their title and of course their content. Remember unlike Google, Bing takes less notice of anchor text and more notice of relevant on-page content. There is no doubt that Bing pays a great deal of attention to the topic of the page linking to you. A boost is given if the linking page title and content relates to a similar topic.
Article marketing using quality article directories such as Ezines and Article Base can be a great aid for boosting your rankings in Bing!
SEO For Bing – Submit Urls
It is possible that many of your quality links that are helping your Google rankings are not even indexed in Bing. Go through all your back links and for any that are not listed in Bing submit them using the Bing submission form.
