Optimizing Your Website for Bing

Since its introduction by Microsoft last year to phase out MSN.com, Bing has managed to eke out a respectable share of the search engine market fiercely dominated by Google. Of course, its recent coupling with Yahoo! has helped; together, the runners up comprise about 30 percent of all searches. With a sizable market share, it’s worth it to optimize your website for this up-and-coming search engine. Here are a few SEO tips for boosting your ranking in Bing.

Submit your website to the Bing Webmaster Center

Add your site to the Bing Webmaster Center to monitor your Bing search analytics, including back-links, outbound links and keyword rank. [Note: This tool does not work well in Google Chrome. For best viewing results, use the latest version of Internet Explorer or Firefox.]

Add your business to the Bing Local Listing Center.

Take advantage of these budding local listings, which aren’t populated with nearly the amount of competition as on Google Local. Submit your website right away and wait for verification by snail mail.

Opt for a more established domain.

Bing tends to boost older domain names over newer ones, so consider hosting your website on an established domain. Of course, if you choose to host your website on a newer domain, you can always garner the higher link popularity of a more established domain you own by redirecting the older website to the newer website.

Pay attention to your title tags.

Like Google, Bing’s algorithm prefers sites with title tags that match keywords in your site content. Relevant site content factors well into link popularity.

Optimize your site content.

Bing’s algorithm seems to prefer web pages that stay on a single topic. Bing web crawlers look for content that is unique and relevant to your title tags. Also, Bing likes substantial content; web pages with more than 300 words tend to rank better in Bing.

Forgo the unethical SEO.

Keyword stuffing, hidden text and links and link farms can prevent your site from being indexed by Bing.

Optimize your Flash content.

Flash video and audio tends to fare better in Bing than in Google. So, make sure to optimize your Flash content by using the appropriate techniques.

Make sure your back-links are relevant.

As with Google, Bing favors websites with more back-links. But Bing also considers how many of these back-links are from sites with related content. Try to match the targeted anchor text to the title tag of the page to which you are linking. Keep your strategic linking relevant to your business or industry for best results.

Scour your website for technical issues that may prevent indexing.

The following technical problems can potentially lower your link popularity and even block your website from being indexed by Bing:

  • Incomplete or invalid HTML code
  • Broken links
  • Improper site redirect
  • Meta tags that restrict crawler access
  • Complicated and ever-changing URLs (Simple, static URLs are easier to index)
  • Documents, images and links corrupted by Malware

If your site has any of the above issues, correct them immediately for best indexing results.

Optimizing your website for Bing can only help you in promoting your website to potential customers. At CyberMark, we can advise you on the best SEO practices for targeting Bing users. We can also help with these search engines. For more details, please contact us.

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