Statistics from ComScore for 2011 show that Bing gained 3 percent of US market share between January and November, up to 15 percent of the total. Google dropped by 1.2 percent, but at 65.4 percent of the total, it is still the giant. Yahoo barely held its second place listing, dropping 0.9 percent to 15.1 percent of the total share.
While Google is the powerhouse of online search engines, it would be a mistake to ignore the opportunities that you can gain by optimizing your web pages for Microsoft’s Bing. Rather than putting all your eggs in the Google basket, consider targeting the growing user base of Bing.
Remember, the basic principles of SEO are pretty consistent, but there are a few Bing-specific tricks and tips.
1) Make Sure You are Attracting Visitors Who Stay
Several announcements and interviews from Bing have highlighted the emphasis they put on users’ interaction with search results.
Firstly, they look at whether a #1 ranked site is actually clicked by searchers and whether those who click stay on the website or come back to the search results quickly. Maximizing your click-through rate and reducing your bounce rate are therefore likely to be good strategies for Bing.
This is also good business sense – there is no point in ranking highly for ‘apartment for rent Harrisburg PA‘, if you aren’t offering that service to your visitors. Keep in mind if the information your visitors need isn’t obvious on the page, you will be losing customers you could have helped.
2) Take Advantage of the Webmaster Center
While they say that nothing worth having is free, Bing’s Webmaster Center may very well be the best exception to the rule. With a plethora of handy stats and data, as well as the ability to customize Bing’s indexing of your website, this SEO tool is a real help.
Use this tool to properly index your blog on Bing and to check the stats.
3) Be a Social Butterfly
While social media campaigns are often used in SEO, Bing has actually come out and made it clear that their algorithms use data from Twitter and Facebook in assessing the popularity of websites. Incorporate social media buttons into your web design to maximize your impact.
Now Google also have started in the same direction and started including social results from Google+. So social presence is getting more exposure and can have prominent impact on search rankings.
4) Tweak Your Titles and Meta Descriptions
Short, snappy titles of under 65 characters are the way to go, but don’t sacrifice keywords or description. Make sure your Meta descriptions are accurate, comprehensive and compelling, both for Bing and your click-through rate.
5) Make Sure Your Domain Name is Relevant
Bing gives extra weight to results from domain names that contain the keywords that users are searching for. If you’re setting up a new website, do your best to find a keyword-rich domain that relates to your content and reap the rewards from Bing.
This guest post brought to you by Shane who enjoys blogging about SEO tips and tricks such as organic use of keywords such as ‘apartment for rent Harrisburg PA’ and social media news.
Image Credit: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I liked the concept of being a “Social Butterfly” 🙂 Your tips are really great
All have posted really well, every webmaster knows these steps and knows the importance of good content and quality backlinks. But while working for client it is not an easy job, as we can put our all ethics their but can implement few and give suggestions. But dear friends in Bing you have to explore some more things, i like it becasue it reacts all differently from google. It can rank you higher easily, but the day you start approaching it, It will leave you no way.
So rank good in google and bing will follow you. 😉
Hello I have found this blog while touring in the blog land. I just loved your blog article. I have gone through most of your articles and they are just amazing. Being “Social Butterfly” is really important in SERP’s. We, the common SEO peoples are only running after the Google and to bring your keyword in the 1st page of Google. But really we forgot that there are lots more search engines like bing, blekko, yahoo, msn, altavista etc, from where we can get the traffic as well. That is why, thanks to you for sharing this article based on Bing. Keep it up mate. I have bookmarked your blog for further resources.
I didn’t know that Bing lets you customize your site indexing. I’ll have to give it a much closer look. It is also good to know that my twitter and facebook activities will not go unnoticed – it is part of the net isn’t it
Wonderful tips on SEO tips and tricks of Ranking .. Really very informative.. I have use Web Master tool its really very helpful and advantage of using it….
Yup, Bing is most definitely on the rise.
Ohh yes, its growing with a good pace and gaining more share in the search engine which makes it more important to take it seriously.
Nice article. I’ve been thinking for a while is there any bing-spesific SEO tricks. Looks like they are going in the right direction with putting emphasis on interaction with search results. Google is probably doing the same, though. However, I’m not that sure if giving extra weight to domain names with rich keywords is a good thing. I mean, it should be one factor but a minor one. In the end, the domain name tells very little about the quality of the content on the site. Furthermore, it forces many people to pick long, often hyphenated domain names.
Yes at the end domain names just an indication of the content topics, but I have always felt Google gives them enough attention.
Thanks for the awesome write up. Visitors is really important that’s why we need to prioritize them! Without visitors, we can never be on the top engine!
Visitors are the key for any blog and all activities are tie up to get them on the blog.
Thanks for the awesome article. But I guess Google is more fascinated with link popularity than Bing.
Yes Amrik, Google give more importance to backlinks, Bing gives but its not the same as Google.
Looks like Bing and Yahoo are in close fight! I have to say that Bing’s algorithm in rankings is somewhat the same as with yahoo and google. Search Engine companies has similarities of course. Social media has also greatly affected has search engines rank websites.
Yes, Most of the search engines are same with slight variations in algorithms. Social media is gaining more and more importance.
Hi Shane,
From your description, I can see that Bing’s method in ranking pages is quite similar to Google so it would be like hitting two birds with one stone if a page is already optimized for Google.
With just a little tweak here and there, the same page can also be optimized for Bing.
I also agree with being a social butterfly. Social media plays an important role in showing interaction on our site and we should put more effort in our social media campaign.
Social media has already gaining importance and with the social search for you, it is more important in Google also.
Thank you so much for the helpful tips you’ve shared on how to rank in bing. There are a lot of things to consider to rank and it cannot be hard anymore with the things you’ve shared.
I guess google and bing and even yahoo has similarities when it comes on how they rank websites on SERPs. Anyway thanks Sanjeev for sharing!
Thanks Rick, Yes most search engine have similarities, its good to know the small differences though.
Be a Social Butterfly can be a great help because you are actually spreading a word to everybody. No matter if you personally know the person or not, it doesn’t matter. So long as you market your place anywhere online.
Being Social Butterfly (I love this name) is really important and its gaining more and more importance in SERP’s.
I was struggling with Bing so far, thanks for tips lets see how it works.
These tips apply to most search engines anyway don’t they. In the case of bing, it would be the Bing Webmaster but the principle are all the same i guess.
Bing Webmaster is really important and with demise of Yahoo site explorer, it is more important.
Wonderful Tips. Social Media and fresh content will always be in demand in 2012 for ranking the websites.Be it Google, yahoo or Bing, SEO webmasters should also focus on these parameters for ranking.
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