SEO for Bing BUT Why : Bing's Search Market Share Analysis

As you all know that Yahoo and Microsoft has just a recent contract where Yahoo will be using Bing’s search algorithm for replacing yahoo’s own search algorithm. Looking at the past behavior of the search marking industry, Yahoo and Microsoft joined together to get on Google, who by far is the biggest player in the search industry. Having said all of that, what’s in for you as a webmaster? Earlier i have explained how to SEO for Bing and today i will back up its importance for every one of us who blogs.

Bing.com History Pre 2009:

Let’s take a look at how Bing was introduced and then we will look into its total market share.  

SEO for Bing : Bing market share

Bing.com History During 2009:

Now lets take a look at the market share in 2009 .

Bing market share 2009

Clearly you can tell that Bing.com will be another major source for webmasters to tap into with that wopping >28% search market share. Going through the Bing Forum seems like Bing will be much more predictable than both Yahoo and Live.com, which is a good news for all the webmasters.  Any other thoughts??

Confirmed: Bing Recommends 301 Redirection

I have been writing about Bing.com and how Bing.com is becoming another powerhouse for webmasters throughout last couple of weeks. Recently I added a SEO plugin for one of my cell phone news blog and which gave me a lot of 404 errors. To correct that I started to use 301 redirect based on the facts that google prefers a 301 redirect. Keep in mind that, Microsoft prefers a 302 redirect but I did 301 redirect anyways since google prefers 301 redirects. This question was also brought out in Bing webmaster forum and it has been verified that Bing now prefers a 301 redirect and it strongly recommends NOT to use a 302 redirect. So, for all of you out there, if you are doing 301 redirect then keep it going and for those who don’t, then its time to switch your 302 redirect into 301 redirect.

How to Perform SEO with Bing for Your Blog

In my last post I have talked about how to submit sitemaps in major search engines where you have seen the name of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Bing is already a buzz word in the search engine world. It is proven to be better than the old MSN.com but again, the million dollar question is as a webmaster “what’s in your wallet? Or how can you SEO for Bing? So, I decided to point out some of things that webmasters can do to improve your site ranking with Bing. SEO with Bing will be similar to SEO with Google. Let’s take a look.

What is Bing?
Microsoft has released a new search engine far better than MSN.com which is called Bing. As Microsoft describes it “Bing is really a decision engine—a faster way to make more informed choices”.

Why Bing is Important for webmasters
I will simply let the number do the talking. It’s been only a little over a month that Bing has been released and Bing is already ranking in the top 20 websites in the world. So, I have decided to compare Bing with Google, Yahoo and Ask.com for their traffic and found the following. For my websites, Bing is already taking over Yahoo for sending visitors. So, if I you would be you then I would keep a close eye on Bing and maximize its potential.

Bing search engine ranking

Things to do for SEO with Bing
Bing emphasizes on SEO very much. In their white paper they said specifically that “All of the benefits from these enhancements are available to websites that invest in SEO.”  SEO for Bing will require the following for all the webmasters:

• Submit your sitemap to Bing
  Submitting your sitemap to Bing is also very helpful for Bing to look into your smashing content. Read through my earlier post about submitting your sitemaps to search engines to find out more. However, there’s no need to resubmit your sitemap to Bing if Live Search previously indexed your website and there have been no recent changes on your website. You can use Google sitemap plugins for you WP blog to create a XML sitemap.
• Unique titles and Meta descriptions to each page
  By adding great post titles and descriptions you will provide Bing with good, keyword-oriented information that will well represent your website thus will rank better in Bing. Read though the “How to Optimize page Title” and then “38 Ways to Electrify Your Blog Post Titles and Headlines“. Once done, use all in SEO plugins for your wordpress blog and implement your learning’s.
• Systematic page Structure
  For Bing web crawlers a systematic and well organized page structure matters. Bing crawlers want the webmasters to use a consistent data structures between pages (such as placing similar data between pages using a similar tree structure, similar class names, support standard markup technologies, such as micro formats, etc.) to add more of your webs site content into Bing’s SERPS.
• High Quality Content
  Once you have performed SEO for you blog and blog posts, you need to start looking at our blog post content. Since, Bing offers a content preview, Bing wants webmaster to perform SEO for clear and high-quality page content.

Hopefully, you can find the huge similarity between the SEO for Bing and SEO for Google. The only thing that I Bing hasn’t mention is the importance of backlink. I assume as Bing learns more they will be asking for backlinks as well. Also, if you wanted to read Bing’s White paper you can find it here. Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that.

How to submit Your Sitemap to Bing/Google/Yahoo

Sitemap is a simple ways to let search engines know about your blog’s posts. Since we tend to forget adding our site maps to search engines except Google,  I wanted to make you life a little easier by explaining how you can submit your website’s sitemap to all the major search engines. But first,

How does Sitemap work?
The only way a search engine knows about your websites content when they crawl your website. That’s why all the major search engines send out Search Engine robots to crawl the web and to discover new content. Once the content is found then search engines download html content of the page and store in their database to display as a search result. And all the search engine crawlers follow links that are given to them in terms of sitemap. And that’s why; everyone MUST submit his or her websites sitemap to all the search engines. It is almost like help those engines to discover pages with newer, fresher and better contents that you website or blog has to offer.

How you can submit sitemap to Search Engines?
It’s amazing that how sometime we forget to submit our websites into all the major search engines. There are three major search engines and fortunately all of them allow webmasters to submit any sitemap for free. The following are the three links that you can use

• Google Webmaster Tools:
  Need a gmail account.
  Link: www.google.com/webmasters/
• Yahoo Site Explorer:
  Need a Yahoo account
  Link: www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
• Bing Webmaster Center:
  Need a windows account
  Link: www.bing.com/webmaster

One thing to keep in mind that there are two types of Sitemap that we can have for our websites

• XML sitemap – For Search Engines web crawlers
• HTML sitemap – For human

It is preferred that webmaster submit a XML sitemap to all major search engines for easy discovery of your pages. And the big guy Google and young boy Bing preferred a XML sitemap. Read through ” Use XML Sitemap for Better Google Indexing ” for detailed information. Having said that, I know that since Google is the biggest buy in the block, we tend to do everything for Google. But sometime, it is wise not to forget about the little guys also. Especially if you are into SEO and are trying to get a better ranking for your blog, every little things count. Any contradictory thoughts ??

I am assuming that you already took a look at my other post about “Page Title optimization and It’s Importance“. And now we will look into how we can achieve our page title optimization.

For a title to be a good SEO title, it needs to convey a message, which is clear, concise and has key word density. For good call of action title, it needs to be catchy enough to invites readers to take an action that will benefit both you and the readers. And for a browser description, the title needs to stand out from all other pages/websites that is open at that time. And for a link submission program, your title needs to be clear and description. So, based on my experience, learning’s and help of others, the following would be a good set of rules that you can start following while writing your title tag.

• Each page MUST have a unique title tag. Nonetheless, there should be a consistency across the website/blog in how the title tags are being constructed.
  Why? Since Search engines and readers expects everything to be organized and consistent. Imagine going to a clean and organized house versus a filthy nasty house.
• Each title tag should not have a length of  more then 85 characters (including spaces) and never to exceed 120 characters .
  Why??W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) guidelines states that the length of the title tag should, ideally, be 66 characters (including spaces) or less. Google truncates after 66 characters or the last complete full word. On the other hand Yahoo truncates after 120 characters.
• The title tag should be written in such a way that it nicely truncates both at 66 characters and 75 characters with space.
  Why?? It will not look good at all if the readers cant read all the word thus cant make any sense thus will not click on your link.
• The title tag ideally being with the name of you business or site name followed by something else.
  Why? Its one way of easy branding your website/blog and at the same time standing out from the crown.
• 
•  If possible, the title tag should incorporate a shot call of action (use of verbs) to call for an action by the readers.
  Why? At the end of the day you are building/creating/maintaining your blog/website to make money, for which you need to have traffic that you convert into a sale or whatever that you want to do. And using action words will make your reader to take an action to reach your ultimate goal.
• Avoid using “and”, “or”, “a”, and “the” as much as you can.
  Why?? Because all search engines ignore those words while for searching fro results and they just take up the valuable spaces. Use ampersand (&) instead of “and”.
• Use moderate capitalization while writing title tags.
  Why?? Research shows that appropriate use of light (yes, very little) capitalization makes a link stand out during results.

Yes, I know all the above sounds challenging and to execute all of them is quite impossible. AS you know nothing is perfect but can try to get as close as we can. So, sit tight before you write you next title tag, think and rethink and then write it.

Have fun with all the rules and if you like my post then please show some love subscribing to my feed and/or spreading the words.