SEO for Bing: Optimization Tips for the Decision Engine

We used to say the 'Big Three' when talking about the major search engines – Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Soon it's all gonna be about the big two – Google and Bing. In case you haven't heard it yet, Microsoft and Yahoo! got the green light on their search deal according to which Microsoft will be serving both organic and paid search results on Yahoo!

Here's what the new Yahoo!-powered-by-Bing will look like once the deal is implemented

(Picture from the Official Yahoo! Blog)

Basically, what's left of Yahoo! are the sidebar navigation and news results. The actual SERPs and PPC ads will be served by Bing. So, if you're ranking well on Yahoo! and get a fair amount of traffic you should check your Bing rankings, because that's where you'll soon rank on Yahoo! as well.

The combined market share of Bing and Yahoo! will be around 28% according to recent ComScore's report which makes Bing quite a serious competitor on the search scene. Although the joint Bing-Yahoo search engine will still be a distant second to Google with their whopping 65% search share, the search deal promises tempting opportunities for PPC advertising and SEO. So let's see how you can optimize your site for Bing and tap into the 30% of search traffic outside Google's reach.

Bing SEO Tips

If you compare the search results on Google and Bing you'll see that the two engines rank sites differently. The difference in results suggests that there's also a difference in the ranking factors and their value. Among other things Bing tends to put more weight on domain age, topical relevancy and outbound linking. Let's see what SEO factors play a role in your Bing rankings and how you can optimize your site to drive your website up.

• On-page SEO

There's no magic bullet for Bing as far as the content optimization goes. Cover the basics and you're good to go: put out unique content, optimize your page titles, H tags and meta-descriptions, strategically employ your keywords in the body, optimize images and so on. Focus on one topic per page as theme relevancy is important on Bing.

• Relevant Inbound Links

Link relevancy is another key to high rankings on the decision engine. Bing tends to favor links coming from pages with the same or similar topic. Try to acquire links from pages with your targeted keywords in the title, H tags and in the body. Links with your target keywords in the anchor texts are even more effective on Bing than on Google, so be sure to take care of that too.

• Linking Out

It's not just who links to you that's important. Outgoing links are also a factor on Bing. By linking out to authority sites in your niche (where appropriate of course) you increase the authority of your own site and as a result get a ranking boost.

• Blogs vs News Sites

We've all heard about Google's love for blogs because of their fresh content. There are a lot of results from blogs in Google News as well as in the news block in the general SERPs. Bing on the other hand tends to give preference to major news sites. Blogs don’t often make their way into the news sections on Bing.

• Domain Age

Bing tends to favor old domains even more than Google. The older the site, the more chances it has to rank well on Bing. Unless you have a time machine there's not much you can do about your domain age. So just sit back and let your domain grow old.

More SEO Advice from Bing

If you're determined to make your website rock on Bing and want to learn as much as possible about Bing SEO, you should certainly check out these articles from Bing Webmaster Center. The advice is coming directly from the search engine team, so it's certainly worth listening to.

• General

Official guide to SEO for Bing

• Link Building

Link building SEM 101

Make links work for you SEM 101

Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly - Part I

Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly—Part 2

• Content

Guide to SEO-friendly content architecture

Head tag optimization advice

Content promotion

Keyword optimization

Dealing with duplicate content

• Use of Flash & Rich Graphics

Images, flash & scripts

• Crawling and Indexing

Enhanced support for large sitemaps

How to remove URLs from Bing

Removing content from Live Search

• Penalties

How to reverse a Bing penalty

Got your own Bing SEO tips?

Have you had success with Bing? Noticed some patterns or effective strategies that you want to share? We'd love to hear about your experience with optimizing for Bing.