For virtually ten years, Google has controlled search but Microsoft has climbed back into the battle with its search engine, Bing.
Today, Bing also powers the Yahoo search results so by optimising for Bing, you automatically optimise for Yahoo.
Bing is Microsoft’s 3rd attempt at building a search engine that might contend with Google. First they tried doing so with MSN, then Live, and now Bing.
While Google remains the 800 pound gorilla in search, Microsoft has made excellent gains and has hundreds of millions of searches each month.
Here are 4 tips for enhancing your Bing rankings so you can tap into the profitable free web traffic:
1. On-page Optimisation is Critical
Bing specifically says that your site should use completely valid code (run it thru a code validator), employ correct redirects, have no broken links and use static pages where ever possible which suggests you are likely to need to rewrite those URLs if you’re using a dynamically generated site. Bing also gives preference to keywords in the title and H1 tags, so be sure you use them in your title and H1 tags.
2. Quality and Relevant Back links
Relevant is the important word here. Bing apparently tries to pinpoint the subject of a web page by picking up topic particular keywords. Links to your site from other similar sites appears to play a significant factor here, too.
3. Bing Webmaster Center
Just like Google, Bing has its own Webmaster center where you can submit your website and Bing will tell you any problems that its robot encounters. This may be anything from overly large file sizes (Bing likes small files) to broken links. You may also discover the sites Bing has found linking to you and the sites to which you are linking. Check these to determine if you are getting quality relevant links to your website!
4. Content
Web professionals have always known that content is king and Bing appears to like all types of content, especially videos, Flash and text. If you are going for a text based website, be sure your content is at least 400 words long and focused around a single subject. Bing webmaster guidelines make it apparent that they don’t like it if you talk about a range of unrelated subjects.
In the final analysis, optimizing for Bing isn’t that much different to Google, so optimising for one should help you out in the other since neither asks you to do something which conflicts with the guidelines of the other.
Behind each successful website aresuccessful online business ideas that the best web masters employ. Did you know that virtually 90% of all clicks go to a web page displayed on the 1st page of Google and, more importantly, the way to get to the top of Google yourself?
