Since it's launch last year Microsoft's 'decision engine' Bing.com has been gaining a slow but steady share of the Search Engine market. Current estimates (including the upcoming merger with Yahoo) put Bing at around 10% of the market, but with Google still dominating anywhere between 85% and 90% is it worthwhile taking Bing into consideration when optimising your site?
Recent and relevant content is King no matter which search engine you use; good page titles are also key; links to your site from reliable external sources are as useful as ever, but perhaps it's best to start with some of the main differences from an SEO point of view.
Many SEO and web design companies are opting out of optimising meta-tags, generating clean URL's and worrying about clean coding, because of Google's lack of emphasis on these factors. But (at least from our point of view at Netdata Ltd.) retaining traditional seo strategies can only be a good thing, since they do no harm on Google results.
We see this as not only a Best Practice issue, but also a way to provide added value to our clients. After all, if everyone else is concentrating solely on optimising their sites for Google, then there's a 10% advantage to be gained by optimising your site for Bing as well.
Recent and relevant content is King no matter which search engine you use; good page titles are also key; links to your site from reliable external sources are as useful as ever, but perhaps it's best to start with some of the main differences from an SEO point of view.
- Meta Tags:
Google's use of meta-tags has been dwindling for years now especially the 'Keywords' tag which is not used at all in ranking your page anymore (click here for definitive words from Google Engineer Matt Cutts ), however Bing still uses it, though how important a factor it is, is still up for debate. - Clean URL's
If you have a dynamic website then you may have URL's in your site which look something like this http://www.mysite.co.uk/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=1921&category_id=24, or you may have an SEO plug-in which converts the url to something like http://www.mysite.co.uk/shop/widgets. The second example is known as a clean URL.
Google places less importance in clean URL's but Bing prefers them. - Clean Coding
Bing favours clean and valid coding, therefore you should run your site through the W3C validator and comply where possible. - SEO Content
Traditional methods of structuring your site content are less applicable to Google, but Bing prefers these methods. For example good use of the Header tags (H1, H2 etc.) to lay out your paragraphs can gain favour with the Microsoft platform. - Inbound Links with Your Keywords in the Title
This appears to be one of the strongest strategies to employ when optimising for Bing. Here's an example of how the code could look when linking to your site <a href="http://mywidgets.co.uk/" title="Click here for great UK widgets">Great UK Widgets</a>
Many SEO and web design companies are opting out of optimising meta-tags, generating clean URL's and worrying about clean coding, because of Google's lack of emphasis on these factors. But (at least from our point of view at Netdata Ltd.) retaining traditional seo strategies can only be a good thing, since they do no harm on Google results.
We see this as not only a Best Practice issue, but also a way to provide added value to our clients. After all, if everyone else is concentrating solely on optimising their sites for Google, then there's a 10% advantage to be gained by optimising your site for Bing as well.
