Bing introduced almost a year ago as the replacement for the stagnant MSN.com, set out to improve the organization of how searches are compiled. By bringing more order to the pages with the placement of tools that is similar in placement to the Google information contained under “Show Options,” Bing promised easy navigation in various categories that are relevant to the search query. While it seems to be slow to capture market share, it is making strides with the recent finalization of the marriage of Bing and Yahoo promises to have 30% of the search volume. According to JR Raphael of PC World in his article on February 18, 2010,
In a nutshell, Microsoft and Yahoo decided to combine their search engine efforts in order to share resources and become more viable market competitors.
Further:
Microsoft will power all the search technology on both Bing and Yahoo. Each site will continue to operate under its own identity; the search-powering switch will be purely under the hood. Yahoo will even be able to maintain its punctuationally challenged “Y!ou and Yahoo!” campaign if it wants.
In exchange for Microsoft’s search, Yahoo will handle the advertising — some of it, anyway. The purple people will head up premium search ad sales for both sites. Microsoft will continue to run its own self-serve advertising and display advertising divisions.
When Bing first rolled out the comparisons to Google and the search results for the same terms were a bit quirky. How can you rank #1, #2 and #10 on Google for a term and on the bottom of page 2 or 3 on Bing? Over the past months or so, we have been able to analyze Bing and how they rank pages to determine how to best optimize your site for optimal results.
How to Optimize for Bing
1. Bing Webmaster Center. Add your site to the Bing index crawler to access data and manage your site. Once submission is completed the Dashboard appears with a top menu bar for analysis of Summary, Profile, Crawl Issues, Backlinks, Outbound Links, Keywords and Site Map. They do not support Chrome so you will need to have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher or Firefox. Little glitch for Chrome users.
2. Bing Local Listing Center. Submit your site and wait for a verification letter in the mail as they do not verify via email or telephone. Prolongs the process however this may be the best kept secret for small businesses. The search volume is lower but now with teaming up with Yahoo, there is the chance for small businesses to reach Bing users.
3. Domain Age. The age of the domain name is important to Bing. They favor domains that are older. This is not to say that they completely ignore a newer domain name but generally rankings are lower.
4. Title Tags. Bing pays close attention to title tags which supports their organization model. Titles with relevant keywords that match the content as is similar with Google.
5. Content. Bing likes words. Pages with 300+ words are ranked better. Words that relate to the title and stay on topic without keyword stuffing.
6. Flash. Bing is flash friendly and will rank optimized videos with the proper text title tags high. They seem to be much more flash friendly than Google however with more and more videos Google is also ranking them higher.
7. Backlinks. It appears that they are not as focused on the quality of the link but more the anchor text which relates to the content matching. The better your content the more sites that want to link to it and that gives the authority.
8. Document Preview. The document preview is the text box that appears next to most results. This is a preview of what is to come. This is pulled from the page and is an except of the page where they see the relevance. It does not pull images nor videos. Here lies the importance of great content that pertains closely to the title tag.
Overall Bing is similar to Google in a good part of how they rank pages. The backlinks is the more the merrier on the same topic/keywords where Google adds in that the quality of the link is a factor. The local business center is good news for local businesses as there is not huge competition in this arena just yet as the search volume is not as extensive as Google. The marriage of Bing-Yahoo will increase their market share so Bing should not be discounted. It still holds true – create a website and blog that has content that is searched and really matches and pertains to the title. Keep writing really great stuff and you will be ranked. It takes time to get noticed and make an impact in rankings.
What have your results been with Bing – consistent to rankings with Google?
photo credit: Betsy Weber