As you put together an SEO plan for your website, don’t forget Bing, Microsoft’s take on a search engine.
Microsoft’s former search engine, MSN Live was unable to deliver traffic, yet Bing continues to gain market share. For example, Computerworld.com reported on July 14 that Bing’s share of online searches reached 12.7 percent in June, compared to Google’s 62.6 percent (Yahoo! had 18.9 percent).
So while not huge by any means, you may not want to ignore Bing as far as optimizing your website goes. That 12.7 percent June share was greater than Bing’s 12.1 percent share in May — Bing’s stake in online search is growing.
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So how do you optimize your site for Bing? Here are a few tips:
Google has its Webmaster Tools center and Bing has its Webmaster Center. If you want to optimize your site for Bing’s spiders, set up an account.
Just as you submitted your site to Google (and probably Yahoo!), submit it to Bing.
Several search experts believe that Bing’s algorithm (managed by MSN) is more keyword oriented than is Google’s. This doesn’t mean you should keyword stuff your site, of course, because Google still abhors keyword stuffers. Just be aware of Bing’s “like” of keywords and continue to provide relevant, engaging content to your site’s pages.
Watch your metatags because Bing appears to give them more value than does Google. Make sure they contain you important keywords. Double check that they’re descriptive. Still, remember that your metatags should never be the main focus of your SEO. Gaining backlinks, for example, still is one of them most important aspects of SEO for your site. Bing, Google and Yahoo! all count backlinks to your site as proof that your site is of value. The more backlinks, the more valuable the search engines consider your site to be, and so the higher your website will rank Bing, Google, Yahoo! and other, minor search sites.
