Bing SEO?

[bronxpad]

I've put in a lot of time on my site to make sure it is full of good relevent content and has a healthy back link profile. I rank well on google but not on Bing. How do I go about optimizing my site for Bing and what does Bing look for that makes them rank sites differnetly than google? Also what other search engines should I be looking to optimize for? As a note I am a Realtor with a Real Estate website.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Joel,

Great question. In general, Bing is similar to Google in it's ranking factors, but there are a few differences. For most webmasters, they are similar enough that best practices for one will generally produce favorable results with the other, but it's not a one to one relationship.

For example

• Creating High Quality Content
• Relevant, editorial backlinks
• Strong Social Signals

...all help improve your ranking with both engines.

Like GIGS20 mentioned, domain age seems to be a bigger factor in Bing's algorythm. It often takes longer for sites to rank on Bing than Google, all other factors being equal.

For what it's worth, Tim Grice (aka SEOwizz) notes that Bing seems to prefer links from pages that contain keywords in the title tag. You can read his analysis here: http://www.seowizz.net/2009/06/bing-seo-how-does-it-differ-to-google.html

As far as Bing is concerned, I'd make sure you're following best practices, like making sure you've registered with Webmaster Tools and making sure your site is indexed, etc. Then work on making your site the best it can be in the eyes of all search engines and you'll be just fine.

[GIGS20]

Joel, it is hard to say, because every site has its own unique design, content, on-site and off-site SEO methods... If you are talking about full maturity then it is probably around 2 years for Bing, but just like I mentioned before - it all depends on your website. Here is a few articles directly from Bing:

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2012/03/23/does-bing-like-seo-you-bet-your-ahrefs-we-do.aspx?PageIndex=2#comments

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2009/09/03/search-engine-optimization-for-bing.aspx

[bronxpad]

Generally how long does it take for a site to mature? My site is about 6 months old.

[GIGS20]

Domain age will be a big factor in Bing SEO, but most of the known off-page and on-page SEO methods will help in all known search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Many SEO experts just perform SEO for a website and not for a specific search engine.  If you concentrate on the website then search engines will follow.