Do you use a different tactic to optimize for Bing?
-
Google is king, but it seems as though there is a significant source of traffic and revenue from Bing. What is the preferred strategy? Optimize for Google and hope it filters to Bing? An obvious concern would be that if we change tactics to please Bing, we could stand to lose our rankings with Google. Any opinions/thoughts/feedback/suggestions would be appreciated.
-
Hi! I see that a good part of your reply is based off of this October 2010 blog post at http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/seo-for-bing-versus-google/. I'd love to see any more recent information that you might have, as well as personal experience.
-
Honestly, just by doing my stuff I do for Google, all my words rank super high in Bing. It just happens there. They seem to also stick much better in Bing, very little movement once I am at the top.
-
Google is not king...they are taking over the world....
Obviously, Bing's algorithm is different from Google's because when the search term is the same but the set of results is different, a difference in the algorithm is the obvious answer. Because google is dominating, the real question is what is difference between the two algorithms and is the difference large enough that it makes it mandatory to reoptimize a site for Bing. THE ANSWER IS NO....unless you have ten things to do and three of them optimize for bing and google, then prioritize those.
Regardless, tests by SEO engineers all around the world have come to a few conclusions about what causes these differences in search engine results....here they are.....
Get Cozy with Microsoft Ad center. They wont admit it but all of our urls, over 50, got enhanced results on Bing when we started doing more in adcenter........believe it.
Backlinks Are Less Important in Bing Comparisons between backlinks (how many links point to a web page) have shown that, all being equal, the top ten search engine results in Bing have fewer backlinks than in Google.
PageRank Matters Less in BingMicrosoft hates google....lets face it.. Page Rank is Google’s algorithm that places a number relative to a web page’s search engine results strength, have shown that PageRank2 (or even PR1) sites regularly appear in the top ten results on Bing, whilst this almost never happens on competitive phrases in Google. (But then it does make sense that a Google-patented page-ranking method would carry less weight with Microsoft’s Bing.)
Inbound Anchor Text Matters More in BingA factor common to both major search engines, anchor text (the text inside the
<a></a>
<a>tags; i.e., </a><a>This is the anchor text</a>
) from quality sources seems to be a large factor with Bing; more so than with Google. A strange phenomenon here seems to be that Bing puts more emphasis on anchor text links that have the linking phrase in the title of the page.Microsoft SEO ToolkitThe Internet information Services SEO tool kit, say that five times fast, is a solid tool kit released by Microsoft that helps you improve your site from an SEO point of view, and therefore, by logic improves its Bing ranking. It includes all the normal stuff: site analysis, robots.txt exclusion, sitemaps, etc.
Pretty good recent article on it can be found here: http://www.brafton.com/blog/seo-tips-to-boost-bing-rankings-as-microsoft-fearlessly-battles-google-800459707
Hope this helps......Ciao!
-
I don't use any different tactics to optimize for Bing. Great targeted content that is easily accessible and has good quality signals (links and social) will rank well on both engines. Bing appears to be a bit more picky on use of the canonical tag and with how clean your sitemap is. Google appears to be a bit more lenient on these fronts, probably due to having a more sophisticated engine.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content across different domains in different countries?
Hi Guys, We have a 4 sites One in NZ, UK, Canada and Australia. All geo-targeting their respective countries in Google Search Console. The sites are identical. We recently added the same content to all 4 sites. Will this cause duplicate content issues or any issues even though they are in different countries and geo-targeting is set? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickstar0 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Has anyone used Wildshark?
Just stumbled across a company called Wildshark SEO (http://www.wildshark.co.uk). Has anyone used them? Any feedback? Please and thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Ranking better in different countries than in the UK
My URL is: www.geckonewmedia.comMy friend's site is being ranked in the top 10 in Google in countries such as Norway, Poland, Spain, Germany and France for the term "web design Edinburgh"The site is UK based and it's ranking on page 3 over here. I went into the webmaster tools and changed the location setting to UK on Monday this week as I thought that might be the issue. So far there's been no change.Can anyone help me out with the reason why it might be ranking so well abroad but not in the UK?Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | geckonm0 -
Opinions on Building Own Blog Network (Private Use Only)
With the lose of buildmyrank and many other services like this on the verge of extension I was looking at building a small blog network of my own for private use. Adsense and also 3 way linking. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this? I know this takes a ton of time to build but if anyone who's done something like this and wouldn't mind sharing some of their tips I would greatly appriciate it. Quick Question
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | upick-162391
Is it safe to register say 30 domains under the same person? Or would it be wiser to use whois protection to guard the names? Anyone else want to contribute their 2c to this strategy please be my guest.0 -
How best to optimize for a law firm that specializes in 3 different areas
I realize the importance of keyword research and finding keywords where there IS demand and not TONS of competition and optimizing your title and descriptions etc AND content on the different pages for those same specific keywords.......... But.... What do you suggest I do to BEST optimize a site for a law firm that handles family law (divorce), bankruptcy AND criminal. It's one firm with 3 attorneys who specialize in different areas. I know SEO is challenging and ever changing and I read and study and have made significant, noticeable, improvements for some sites but I have to admit this is over my head. Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you in advance and have a GREAT weekend! Matthew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mrupp440 -
What Backlink Services Do You Use or Recommend?
Hi, I need some help w/ link blding and would like to outsource some of it. Can you recommend any reputable company thats affordable? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan0 -
Lots of optimized content but crappy rankings
Hi, I write content for the site http://www.healthchoices.ca. We were hit by Panda (a different issue that is resolved now) but even before that, I'd write an entire library of good content. An example: the plant sterols library. Here's an article as an example: http://www.healthchoices.ca/article/where-are-plant-sterols-phytosterols-found There are about eight on average in each medical library, and we cover topics from acne to sexual health. The other half of the business is a directory. We have thousands of local health are providers, a basic version with just an address, and a longer version where we optimize the text. Here's an example: http://www.healthchoices.ca/profile/ct-mri-scans/canada-diagnostic-centres We come up buried on the third page, far after directories with zero content or crappy content. What am I missing? I am getting very frustrated as I've been writing this stuff for a long time and nothing seems to come of it. Thanks so much, Erin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | erinhealthchoices0