How Bing Can Be Music to Your Website’s Search Rankings

Microsoft hopes that Bing, their “decision” search engine, can chip away at Google, the goliath of search engines.  In August, Bing held 10.7% of the search engine market, while Yahoo fell 4% to 16% of the market share.  Google slipped, but still retained a 64.6% share, according to The Nielsen Co.

Preliminary polls estimate that Bing will eventually capture 15% to 30% of search engine users – making Bing a strong competitor against Google.  In addition, if Yahoo and Microsoft’s proposed partnership can pass antitrust inspections, be prepared for Bing to shake Google’s dominance.

Is Your Website Indexed in Bing?

While most webmasters currently tailor their search engine optimization strategies to Google’s algorithm, Bing’s foray into the search market will change the SEO playing field.   Taking steps now to optimize your website for Bing will help you capitalize on their battle against Google.   The first step is to verify that Bing is indeed indexing your website.

1. Check Bing’s Results for Your Website: Is your website currently indexed in Bing?  Visit Bing.com, and in the search bar, type in url: followed by your web address.  For example, if you are checking for Communicate Better, you would type url:www.communicatebetter.org into the search bar.
2. Submit Your Website to Bing’s Index: If your website is not currently appearing in Bing, you can submit your website for the MSNBot to crawl.  While this does not guarantee that Bing will index your website, it does increase your chances.

Once you have taken these two preliminary steps, then it is time to delve into Bing SEO, also nicknamed DEO (decision engine optimization).

Bing vs. Google: SEO Discrepancies

In reviewing Bing’s Webmaster Center, many of their published SEO guidelines are very similar, if not identical, to Google.   Like Google, Bing evaluates the quality of your website based upon content, keyword relevance, and backlinks.  However, there are discrepancies between Bing and Google to keep in mind.

• HTML Errors Are Not Tolerated. According to Bing’s Technical Recommendations, it is important that webmasters only include “well-formed” HTML code.  Based upon preliminary testing, it appears that Bing may be less tolerant of sloppy HTML than Google has been.
• Specialized Content Pages are King. Like Google, Bing believes that content is king – especially if you create specialized content pages.  Bing recommends that each web page discusses one particular topic, instead of several subject matters.  Commissioning your freelance writer to create specialized topic pages can help your website rank higher in Bing’s search results.
• Age Matters. Bing’s algorithm may value a domain’s age more than Google.  Thus, the longer your domain has been registered, the more favorably it may rank within Bing’s search results.
• Backlinks May Be More Important: Based upon preliminary tests, it appears that Bing puts more emphasis on backlinks than even Google.  In a Bing vs. Google test, a website with a PR5 appeared lower on Bing’s search results than a PR2 site.  Why?  The PR2 website had more quality backlinks, even though the PR5 site was better optimized.

Some elements of Bing’s algorithm, such as weighting your domain’s age, leave you little room for SEO techniques.  However, hiring a freelance SEO writer to create informative specialized web pages, cleaning up your code, and continuing to build quality backlinks are easy steps you can take to optimize for Bing.

Could Bing be the “David” that brings Goliath Google to its demise?  Only time and effective search results will tell, but with preparation, at least your website can be successful, regardless of who wins the battle.