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Atanu Sarkar
March 10, 2017

Table of content

Introduction:

When it comes to online visibility and Search Engine Optimization, Google is the only name which comes to the mind of many marketers as well as entrepreneurs. Covering a major share in the market, Google holds and dominates the SEO market without any strong or tough competition. It’s necessary for a business to ensure that it holds a good reputation and rank on this giant search engine platform, as it makes them visible to their large number of potential customers.

The popularity and fame of Google are too strong for any other search engine to jump in the competition. It is in fact so popular that a large chunk of internet users have no idea about the existence of any other search engine. They heavily rely on Google for surfing, downloading or for any other purpose.

But, when it comes to the marketers and entrepreneurs, the scenario has to be completely different. Yes, most of them have a stipulated budget for search engine optimization, but only for Google. It is true that Google has the largest share of customers and potentials for a business, but it was the sole one in the market till some years ago. Bing and Yahoo, although not giving a huge competition, but holds a strong position in the market. Combining them both ensures that about 33% of the market-share is covered by them.

On the surface, it might appear that Bing does not get sufficient search traffic, because of which people don’t consider it when it comes to market their business. But, it does hold a good amount of market share, which when compared to Google might seem just too less to you, but still is a large chunk of the audience, whom your business should cater to. Most SEO specialists and experts focus only on Google and make strategies, adopting the latest algorithms to rank on this search engine. Completely ignoring and neglecting Bing. The result is that they lose their chance to gain access to a large number of their potential customers.

Even a single customer counts for a business, and Bing gives you access to around 33% potentials- how can you lose them knowingly?

Why Bother With Bing?

The growing market share of Bing is a major reason for which the marketers need to consider this search engine. There are so many reasons for which one must think definitely to optimize their site for Bing. Putting the first thing in the first place, you must consider that all your rivals are focusing on optimizing only on Google, you can help your business to stay ahead of every competition, by optimizing it for Bing and positioning your business strongly here. Reaching about 30% searchers is not a matter of joke; it’s a lot of eyes and might bring to you the expected results in no time.

There are also several differences between the demographics of people who use Bing and Yahoo as compared to the ones who use Google. Depending on your target audience and your business objective, you may want to consider particular parts of a country or particular type of household who are more likely to use Bing over Google.

Marketers feel that the kind of techniques and strategies which they are using for Google will work smoothly on Bing too! Whoa… You have a surprise here… Your strategies for Google will not work on Bing. So, make some research and come up with the optimization strategies which are unique and are friendly with Bing.

As is known to all of us, Google frequently updates its algorithms, which many times leave the company’s rank, position and market in a scramble and they find it difficult to adjust to the changes. Meanwhile, they even tend to lose the potential customers who were looking for them online. In such cases, having optimized Bing websites and businesses ensure that you have a continuous flow of business and you can still be relevant to the market, while you fix up the problems or issues on Google.

History of Bing:

Online search has been a synonym to Google for several years and it is still the same in many parts of the world, because of which this search engine has secured an excellent position of the Giant- leader of the market covering the large chunk of the market. Owned, developed and managed by the American software company, Microsoft Corporation, Bing, Search Engine was launched in 2009. It was Microsoft’s effort to compete with the sole industry giant, Google Inc. With the hope to change the dynamics of the search-engine market, Microsoft released Bing, a decision engine, which was designed to display more retrieved information in search pages that was typical, thus enabling better-informed decisions concerning what links to follow and in some cases also satisfy the original query.

It is also designed in a way which displays the related searches and also displays the previous searches of the users on the left side of the page. In July 2009, an agreement was reached between Yahoo! And Bing, which was scheduled to last for 10 years. Bing powers Yahoo!’s search results.

Although the market of Bing was somewhat slow in the initial years and it was nowhere to be seen in the early phase of the competition where the market was mainly occupied by Google and Yahoo!, but the search engine has gradually risen to power and was the second largest search engine in the United States in 2016.

Why Is Bing Search Important For Your Business?

The significant evolution of Bing and its major feats in the market has enabled it to grab a good share in the industry and get hold to a good chunk of the society. In the recent years, it has become obligatory for every business to make it a point to be visible to their potential customers and reach out to them whenever they find it, or the products or services which they offer.

In its initial phase, Bing was painted as everything which Google was not. It was introduced in this way and people had high expectations from the same. But, it has gradually developed as a major platform where a business must list them in order to secure a good position and to develop an ideal prospect for their business. Bing has a different form of practices which is quite unique to that of the conventionally accepted SEO wisdom, which was being ignited by Google.

With various verticals being available for each and every individual to look up for a business, it becomes mandatory for the enterprises to be on the go and to be visible on every platform. And as Bing has emerged as a significant player in the market, it has become essential for every enterprise to make sure that they leave no stone unturned in reaching out to their potential customers.

The reasons why being on Bing has become essential for your business include the following:

1. Bing Is Rising Gradually –

Since its humble beginning, this search engine has experienced a gradual rise in terms of its market share and popularity. In the last three years, it is because of Bing that Google’s market share has dropped from 66.9% to 63.8%, while Bing’s share has risen to 21.6% from 18.1%. The steady increase of the search engine and its new collaboration with various partners has significantly enabled it to take a step ahead in the market and to rise gradually.

2. Bing Offers Significant Value For Local Search –

Bing is a strong contender of Google as it provides excellent local marketing feature. Microsoft is continuously working to establish Bing as an important member of the local ecosystem and thus provide them with the right kind of service to develop the position. The Bing Local allows to best matching geofilters and keywords and thus is known for its significant and organic search engine results page.

3. Bing is Used By Significant Demographics –

While the market considers Bing to have a small share in the search market, the search engine holds a strong and highly targeted demographic. Being a Microsoft product, it is not difficult for us to imagine the people who would be using this search engine. Microsoft product consumers, it’s said, are tending to be older, middle class and less tech-gig. The statistics of Bing’s users, come in-line with this image. It paints a picture that this search engine is mostly used by older, well-educated demographic who make a comfortable living. Some of the interesting facts about Bing include the following:

• 51% of the Bing’s audience is female.
• 72% of Bing’s audience is above 35 years.
• 48% of Bing users make over $75 000 a year.
• 85% of Bing’s traffic comes from the US.

So, it is the ultimate platform for every individual who tends to make the business and get the perfect and ideal visibility to the particularly targeted demographics.

4. Bing Brings Biggest Value To Your Marketing Strategies –

Bing’s reputation as the underdog in the search market is the biggest value to the marketers. The Bing Network includes 60 million unique searches which can only be reached or accessed via Bing. The competition is much lower on Bing than that of Google. It ensures that you don’t need to spend a lot of amount for advertising on Bing, yet you can easily reach to them the specified target audience without facing much problems or issues.

What Matters In Bing SEO?

While every other thing is sorted and well-placed in your mind by now, you ought to get the information about what are the features or characteristics that matter in Bing SEO. Let’s take a closer look at the same:

Brand Preference and Website Type – Similar to Google, Bing seems to give ranking preferences to brands. Both the search engines consider the brands to naturally have more backlinks with the name of the brand in the link text alone, known as “brand links”. Bing does not face many difficulties in distinguishing brands from their related competitors.

The search engine also is seen to favor the older websites with more official domain names such as .gov or .edu. The new or commercial websites which are more favored on Google faces a tough time on Bing. This means Bing is more inclined to present more factually relevant results for each search which is made by the users.

strong>Social Signals – Bing tends to put more emphasis on social media signals. It has been observed that the well-positioned results on Bing tend to have a high number of social shares, likes and tweets and specific URLs with a high mass of social signals are reported to be on the top of the search result.

This ensures that when a user searches on Bing, they can immediately see a Facebook friend or Twitter follower has recommended or rated the company or product. This smart and unique feature is missing on Google as they have not yet been able to integrate the social media into their search results.

Backlinks – While Bing puts a good amount of emphasis on social signals, it does not ignore the backlinks. Sites with more backlinks find a high ranking on this search engine, similar to Google. But the quality of those links is much more important for Bing than their quantity. It even offers a helpful link explorer tool which enables the users to get a better understanding of the value of the links on a given page.

It actively removes the indexed pages, if they are found to have insufficient link authority or value to rank in their search results. In order to secure a good lace in Bing’s index and search results, one need to have at least one external website link to it.

Content And Location – Relevant and quality content correlate strongly with good ranking on this gradually evolving search engine. Google relies much more on the text content, while Bing seems to be more likely to reward pictures, videos and other such contents due to “entity understanding”. It smartly interprets the websites which use flash, a feature which is missing on Google.

When it comes to local searches, Bing also tends to show more relevant and ideal small businesses, assuming that the searcher will prefer most proximal results. For businesses with local locations for customers, Bing is the best place to optimize their business for.

Technical Considerations – Bing takes into consideration every single thing from site speed, to the position of the keyword, the title of the content to other technical factors before placing them to the top position. It still depends on keywords in page titles, Meta tags, and specific keywords and considers them all before making a decision of helping it to find a top most place in its ranking.

Is Bing Traffic Valuable?

You might think that compared to Google, Bing stands nowhere in the market and thus the traffic coming from the same might not be very effective or valuable for your business. But, you need a strong correction here. You need to be sure that traffic is always important and valuable for a business, doesn’t matter where it comes from. Every customer is important for your business and you need to make every single attempt to retain them brilliantly.

Organic traffic is always compelling and it is just ideal for every business to gain free traffic.

Traffic coming from Bing always ensures that there is always a possibility for you and for your businesses to gain good and positive traffic along with attracting relevant customers.

It has been observed that traffic coming from Bing-

• Has a lower bounce rate.
• Visits more pages of the site.
• Spends quality time on the site.
• Subscribe to my lists more.
• Clicks more affiliate links.
• Contacts the business.

How To Get Started With Bing?

If you are new to Bing, you might be wondering from where you should start in order to get the right kind of traffic and conversion for your business. Clearing the air, here we are bringing you a comprehensive guide which enables you to get started with Bing search engine.

1. Claim Your Business- Just like Google, you need to claim your business on Bing too in order to maximize your local search results. Visit Bing Places For Business and create or claim your business listing. Once you are done with this, the next step you need to take is to register your website in a similar way; you registered with Google, by indexing it.

2. Get Your Site Indexed- Submit your site to the Bing’s Webmaster Tool. The first thing you need to do is to create a Bing login, then visit the Bing Website Submission Page and fill up the form. You will also need the URL address for the XML sitemap of your website. Verify your ownership and within a few minutes, you will see your website on the list of Bing’s search results.

3. Tag & Categorize Your Site- Your website containing the right tag and category makes it easily discoverable on the search engines. It gives a clear view of the search engine and to the users about what really is your business associated with. In the absence of these tags and categories, the bounce rate of the site goes up and the organic search traffic goes down.

4. Use SEO Keywords In Proper Context- The usage of relevant keywords is much crucial for the ranking on Bing. Your website should be fully optimized with marketing slogans and other ad copy that provides descriptive information around the specific and targeted keywords which you want to focus upon.

5. Connect To Social Networks- Another method which you must be using in order to help drive Bing search results is to integrate social media into your SEO strategy. Connect your website with the relevant social media profiles and you will have a wide access to a brilliant position on the Bing search results.

6. Use Great Content- Every search engine promotes unique and great content. If you want to get the desired result on the Bing Search engine then don’t forget to use only the unique contents. Bing is known for especially looking at the quality of the content which is defined by its authority, utility, and presentation. In order to maximize your chances of excellent ranking on Bing, your blog post should contain approximately 1,600 words or more of quality and unique content.

SEO For Bing Is Much Easier Than You’re Used To

Unlike Google, Bing is surprisingly open about its ranking factors and ways. Let’s take a look at the points which will help you in ensuring a perfect rank for your business in Bing:

1. Indexation & Technical SEO- Bing is clear that you need to get your website indexed in order to develop excellent traffic from the search engine. So, the first thing that you need to keep in mind is to ensure that your website is indexed. Ask the search engine to crawl your site more frequently, so that your business would turn it to full volume. With all these in place, prepare your Sitemap and submit it to Bing.

2. Keep Your Keywords Straightforward- Bing is not too good at broad-matching queries and thus it is effective if you use a straightforward keyword. This is what will work best for you in the search engine. This means keyword research is going to be one of the most important steps in your optimization process. Don’t take it lightly.

3. On-page SEO- When it comes to Bing, the on-page SEO is more like the old school type. It requires you to optimize your title and meta-description and be very careful of the meta keywords which you have used. Make sure that the heading title and content does carry the keywords which enable your site to rank high.

4. Click-through Rate- Bing is quite liberal and open about user signals playing a big part in their algorithms. The behavior of the users is measured in terms of SERP click through rates and it thus provides them with the necessary data that enable them to use it and determine the value of the website.

What To Avoid In Bing’s SEO?

In order to be safe and avoid any kind of issues or problems with your website’s SEO on Bing, you have to play safe and strategize each and every work according to the search engine’s algorithm. It will not only help you to lay your focus upon the brilliant execution of your plan rather you will also be greeted with desired results and outstanding outcome which stands second to none in the industry. When it comes to Bing, the following things should be avoided for being safe and for ensuring good ranking:

Cloaking- It means showing one version of the web page to Bing and another version of the page to the visitors. With this, you can surely make your way in the initial phase but once it comes to the search engine’s notice, the rank of your website will fall drastically.

Link Schemes- Bing always demands quality links. Quantity doesn’t matter to this search engine, it only longs for quality which should never be compromised with. Adopting, any kind of shady practices result in getting delisted from the result of the search engine.

Social Media Schemes- Social media is an important consideration when it comes to Bing. Thus, it is extremely important for you to attach your website with the various social media platforms. Bing wants you to be influential on social media; it does not only encourage you to use the tactics that increase a number of followers but ensure that you are socially active on them too.

Meta Refresh Redirects- With the use of this, the website owners, instead of showing 301 errors or redirect, automatically sends visitors to other content. This practice generally does not go well with Bing.

Use Of Duplicate Content- Having duplicate content is liked by no search engine. Bing is no different. If you apply the duplicate contents on your web then there are high chances that Bing will lose trust on your website.

Keyword Stuffing- Keyword is essential for Bing and maintaining its proper density in the content is also essential but going beyond it is not acceptable to the search engine. Keyword stuffing is not accepted by Bing and thus you should avoid doing it at any cost.

Undertaking or performing any of these things as your SEO strategies might affect your site’s ranking and might also cause it to suffer delisting from the search engine’s results. It is always better and a good idea to make the most of the positive and organic ways of listing your site and enjoy an excellent position of your business.

In case, your site has been delisted for any of the above reasons, don’t worry, you still have a chance and hope to come up and tackle the same. However, it might be a time-consuming process. Whether your site was removed algorithmically or manually from the search engine, you need to submit a reconsideration request to the search engine offering a detailed explanation of what you have done in order to fix the problems. Be very serious about your business’s reputation and image don’t leave any stone unturned or any single detail out. This process is similar to that of Google.

Having your website re-listed can take several months so it’s always a wise decision for you to take precaution measures instead of opting for a cure. You might have well heard that “precaution is better than cure”, it is true in every sense. Thus, incorporate the repairing strategy in your SEO techniques or long-term SEO strategy and don’t look out for any kind of shortcut out here.

Top-Ranking Factors For Bing

The ranking factors which work for Bing and which guarantees a website a relevant and excellent position on the search engine are varied. It provides you with excellent and brilliant solutions which enable potential and ideal position for a website on the search engine. There are so many prospects and opportunities which await for you to find on Bing, missing out on them may not hamper the growth of your business, but it significantly keeps you away from relevant and valuable traffic for your business. Some of the key factors which work essentially in positioning your businesses at the top most position of this search engine are mentioned below:

User Engagement Is Very Essential –

User engagement is one of the strongest signals for Bing to position your business. Having a strong user engagement as a part and parcel of your website ensures that it will definitely contribute to the development of your ranking on Bing’s SERP.

Bing uses the ‘pogo sticking’ measure to gauge the user engagement of a website. It works when a user searches for a particular thing, clicks on a specific result and then clicks back to the search results.

Thus, according to this technique, if a number of people search for something and clicks on your website, which comes up as a result of the search, and then again returns to the search results, would clearly indicate the search engine that our website has a slow user engagement. This can drastically affect your website’s position.

However, if your website is visited by a number of people and they don’t go back to the search result, then the clear indication of a good user engagement is sent to the search engine as a result of which the position of your website improves organically.

Click Through Rates Does Matter-

Along with the user engagement what works best for this search engine is the click through rates. There is no way through which you can get in touch with Bing personally and ask them to position your business at the top most rank. The ultimate way is through the techniques and through the process which you use. Bing takes into consideration the user engagement data and improves the results of the search.

Measuring the click through rates from its search result pages, the search engine uses the data and combines it with the user engagement data above to improve the result.

For example, if it finds that the result which stands on the number one position gets a 20% click through rate, but the one which stands on the second position gets a 40% click through rate, obviously mean that the #2 result is more relevant than that of the #1 result and thus changes the result for the best.

The click bait works well when you write the meta titles and descriptions while keeping the humans in mind while being specific with your keyword. Thus, the keyword selection has to be done very smartly and it has to be used excellently.

Activate Your Social Media Profiles-

Social media likes, comments, and share does create a significant impact on the search engine result. The social media profiles like Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram play a significant role which helps in contributing to the significant development of the improved ranking.

The way Bing takes into consideration the social signals is way too strong than that of Google. Thus, each and every business must leverage the best use of their social platforms in order to make it a point that their business stands second to none in the search engine results.

The social signals must be a core part of your business strategy and its presence has to be there in order to assure you of a great presence.

If you are a social geek then Bing is the best platform for you to market and rank your business, use your social abilities to gain advantage for your business.

Bing Authorship-

It was Google who introduced the concept of authorship in order to allow people to claim the contents that they have written. This helped them to identify and determine who the true experts in the specific industries are.

Bing has its own version of Authorship. It comes up with the search result which shows the following:

• The LinkedIn Summary Of Your Profile.
• Other Social Media Profiles.
• Influential Topics.
• 2 most influential moments from Twitter in the past 7 years.
• 2 most influential posts from Instagram in the past 90 days.

Backlinks Are Of Low Priority-

Backlinks are important for Google, but when it comes to Bing, the same is not applied. Google gives more prominence to the website with more backlinks, but when you will go through the search results of Bing, you will find that the top-ranking sites have noticeably fewer backlinks.

It is because it supports quality over quantity and does not necessarily rely on backlinks to favor a website or to offer the top-most ranking to it.

However, Bing does favor ‘editorial’ type links from within a body of the content. It prefers it there rather than getting the link from a sidebar, footer. The site relevancy does matter a lot to this search engine.

Inbound Anchor Text Is Important-

Anchor text usage and emphasis that is done by Bing is much more than that of Google. Bing isn’t as good and friendly with keyword matches as that of Google and thus requires anchor text is very important for all.

While Google is good at matching the keywords, synonyms, and contexts around a keyword, Bing needs special mention and specification in order to grab and catch the keyword. So, the trick used here is to ensure that the links coming from high authority sites focus on exact anchors so as to help improve your visibility.

Keyword Domains Matter-

It’s good to have your keyword in your domain name for Bing. It isn’t critical or mandatory but is ideal for the businesses to use it in the domain name and enjoy a good position at the search engine results.

While placing the keyword in your domain, it becomes ideal for you to get the best of the services and enjoy a relevant and ideal position which ultimately benefits your business and helps you get a good visibility in front of the targeted and relevant traffic.

Page Authority Is Important-

It does not pay much attention to the backlinks but places a lot of weight on site authority. It is much more critical and tough a job to rank a new domain in Bing than that of Google. It always prefers old domain over the new ones and takes them into consideration much before than the latest ones.

Having an aged domain will give you an edge over your competitors across the Bing’s results. And if you have an older domain with your keyword in it, then this is a golden chance for you to rank among the top results.

Content & Keyword Density Is Important-

Unique content, as mentioned above, is loved by all search engines. Bing too loves it. It places much higher value to the original, longer and more engaging content than that of the shorter ones.

When it comes to Bing, you need to feed it with the specific keyword for which you want your page to rank for. It is always better to focus on 1 page per keyword with Bing as this will surely get you the best of the services out of the SERP’s results.

Site Structure & Code Is Valuable-

Bing is very careful about the technical issues of a website and it offers specific advice for each of the issue. The first thing that they advise for site structure and code is that the content should be organized in close association with the structure. In other words, no content should be more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.

Everything in the back end of the site must be clean and clear so that no other issues or problems crop up in the market.

Onsite Optimization-

The value of onsite optimization is similar to Bing SEO as it is there with Google. You ought to make sure that you are using meta title and description tags in your page which must include exact keyword match.

The title tags play a great role in Bing, but it also keeps in mind the user engagement issue. For optimizing your website, you must have 1 H1 tag per page in order to establish the main topic and it should be followed with the use of H2 and H3 tags which would include the sub-topics.

Binging The Future

Online search is a critical ingredient in the marketing mix and it harnesses great prospects and helps the marketers significantly to tap the potential of the market and spread the word about their business significantly. Google used to dominate the market all alone with no or minute competitors being here and there. It is in the recent years, that Bing has gradually paved its path to the market’s apex and is giving a tough competition to Google.

When it comes to preferring the search engine, although a large number of people considered Google but the paradigm has shifted and Bing is also preferred by a significant number of users around the world. The numbers rendered by Bing is pretty clear and easily understood which contributes to its popularity.

The rapid growth that it has experienced within a short period of time is too wide and remarkable. With the constant changes and evolution in the demand for online search, new techniques and strategies are adopted by the entrepreneurs to ensure maintaining that their business is always on the top of the SERP result.

Standing in today’s landscape, it will not be a false claim to say that 1/3rd of world’s searchers are already powered by Bing, directly or indirectly. Mozilla Firefox, Kindle Fire, Siri on iPhone, Yahoo! Search, Windows 10, Yelp and several other platforms which you use, intentionally or unintentionally takes you to the Bing search. It is experiencing the phase of an ever-growing audience which is enabling it to sharpen its strengths and polish its skills to cater a better search result to its audience.

Today the Bing network powers over 10% of PC searches in Germany, over 20% in the UK and more than one-third of the US. With its innovative and out-of-the-box features, it helps the searchers to get more relevant and appropriate answer for their search. The result is not only visible in PCs, but it is visible on all devices, without any issues. From phones to tablets, every person can actually get a more customized result, which is rare to be found on other search engines. The marketers and the experts of the industry are often heard saying that it is the humanization of search.

Bing’s technology is now being adopted across the industry and thus there is a great chance that very soon your habit of “Googling” might be replaced by your habit of “Binging”. Being still responsive to the feedbacks and being dedicated to enabling the brands and marketers to penetrate deeper in the market by looking at their respective business prospects, Bing has opened several gateways for the businesses to market themselves in front of the relevant customers around the world. Amplifying the engagement opportunities, Bing is the future of the modern online search and the way it is expanding its reach is sure to take over Google in the near future without facing any kind of hassle or trouble. The intelligent power of search and the way people interact with the search technology is remarkable in its nature. The voice search, Amplified AI, bots, and machine learning – everything is incorporated within this search engine in order to give you a more comprehensive and customized search result and help the businesses to reach out to their specified prospects. Thus, it is anticipated to be the imminent future of the search engine industry.

Optimizing your business for Bing is a smart and efficient idea which you can adopt in the modern day and that can guarantee to give you a brilliant prospect for your future. Hiring an SEO company to meet your business requirements and to give you the right kind of result which you desired for, is always considered to be a smart move by the entrepreneurs. We at Webskitters understand your business objectives and give you the right kind of visibility and online reputation in Bing so as to expand your traffic rate brilliantly. Our proficient professionals and experts in the industry delivers the right kind of measures and adopt brilliant strategies in order to develop a good rank for your website on the search engine, with the right kind of search engine optimization services and techniques that stand second to none in the market. With our brilliant understanding of each and every algorithm of Google and Bing, we tend to improve the online visibility with the apt and applicable optimization techniques.

Atanu Sarkar

Atanu Sarkar, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Webskitters Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd & Webskitters LTD has strong data analytics, business development and entrepreneurship skills. He keeps himself updated about latest technological innovations in his past time and encourages his team to incorporate new technologies and move beyond the defined boundaries of design, development and digital marketing. His inquisitive nature constrains him from flattering any limits and that’s made him a successful entrepreneur, a great leader for his team and a wonderful human being.