Who Cares About Bing?
YOU Should! Here’s Why
Bing – I imagine you’ve heard of it? This new little search engine? If you’re like me, you probably don’t pay that much attention to it…. and you probably don’t worry about how you rank in Bing, either. Not much traffic comes from Bing, does it? They are small potatoes compared to the almighty Google, right? Yeah, well…. the days of ignoring Bing are just about over. There are some major changes rolling out now. Here’s what you need to know and what you need to do about it.
…and they lived happily every after….
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Bing and Yahoo met…and decided to form a partnership – a search alliance.
They made an agreement to share resources and work together in an attempt to claim more of the online search market share that Google has dominated for years.
I didn’t think much about it when I was reading the details months ago. I knew it would have some impact, but it never crossed my mind that it would work out like this.
All this came to my attention when a fellow Wealthy Affiliate member asked in our private forum if anyone else was noticing major changes in their rankings in Yahoo.
Now, I’m gonna admit that I rarely check on my rankings in Yahoo. Whatever traffic I get from Yahoo is such a small percentage of my over-all traffic that it never concerned me all that much.
But, when the question was asked, I got to poking around online and found out something that really caught my attention.
It was recently announced that both Bing AND Yahoo
will be showing BING results in their search engines.
It is starting out now in their testing phase as they are incorporating a certain percentage of results from Bing into the results shown at Yahoo. If all goes well, I imagine the full change will be rolled out soon after. Now, the Yahoo blog has claimed that they might wait until after the holiday season to finalize this change, but who knows? I keep reading different thoughts and claims so as usual, we wait and see.
Now, Yahoo will still LOOK like the Yahoo we’re used to – and Bing will still LOOK like the Bing we’re used to…. but search results on BOTH sites will now be coming from Bing. This change is slowly rolling out. It’s been claimed that all US and Canada organic results will be fully powered by Bing (Microsoft) as soon as August or September. But again, I keep reading different time frames.
What Does This Mean To YOU?
The main response to this is usually, “So what? What does that mean to ME?“
Here’s what it means for you…
If you currently have good rankings in Yahoo, but NOT in Bing… kiss those Yahoo rankings good-bye. Whatever your ranking is in Bing will be what your new Yahoo ranking will be, too.
Considering Bing is so new and their index of the web is still so very small, it’s really possible that they don’t even KNOW about your site yet…and you won’t have any exposure or chance for organic traffic from Bing OR from Yahoo.
Great, huh?
But still, who cares, right? Google is the only search engine you need to worry about, right?
Well, yes…. and no.
What Does This Yahoo/Bing Alliance REALLY Mean?
They are going after market share… BIGGER market share. The online search business is BIG business…and the Bing/Yahoo folks want more of it.
Take a look at this chart from Comscore.com showing the market share for the top search providers online.
Google has a strong 62.6% share of all searches online. Even tho their share is down a bit for June 2010 that is still a LOT of searches going through their search engine.
Now look at Yahoo at 18.9% and Microsoft (Bing) at 12.7%. What’s gonna happen when those two search providers really start working together? I’ve read folks saying they expect the Yahoo/Bing alliance to achieve 30-35% of that online search market share very soon.
Now it’s making a bit of a difference, isn’t it? In my humble little opinion, if Bing gets it together, gets more of the web in their index and starts returning really good and relevant results, I bet they could get more than 35%. I’ve haven’t been a fan of search results from Bing.
In fact, I’ve barely paid any attention to them… until now.
Oh, wait, here is another interesting tid-bit. You know the search option on FaceBook? That is powered by Bing. It’s getting more interesting now, isn’t it?
Google SEO vs Bing SEO
Here is a really good video from WebProNews that talks about the differences in Google SEO and Bing SEO. It’s time to learn how to rank in Bing – because that will get you ranking well in Yahoo, too.
What To Do About It
We’ll talk more about the “how to rank in Bing” stuff in a moment, but first let’s talk about “Now What Do I DO About This Bing/Yahoo Thing?”
First, go to Yahoo and search for your keywords… compare them to how you rank in Bing. Whatever you see in the Bing results will be what you will soon see in the Yahoo results, too.
Are your rankings in Bing ok? If so, great! If not, you’ll need to do something about it.
As I mentioned earlier, Bing is still new – their index is still small with a LOT of web content still left to be discovered. If your site can’t be found in Bing at all, you need to tell Bing about it…help them find you.
There are a couple ways to do this.
How To Tell Bing About Your Site and/or Web Page
First, consider adding your site to the Bing webmaster tools. They are updating this area for webmasters in an attempt to…well, to get their index better and increase their market share =)
There is something called Microsoft Silverlight 4 which is this little application your install and then Bing webmaster tools is able to tell you a lot about your site from what Bing knows…and these stats can go back as far as 6 months. Things like indexed pages of your site, crawl stats, top search queries and click thrus, and the ability to help them find specific urls on your site that they haven’t found are all parts of the tools area for webmasters inside Bing.
The tools aren’t bad – not Google webmaster tools by any means, but it’s ok and they claim they will be adding more and more tools and stats inside the webmaster tool area as time goes by.
If you don’t want to add your site to their tools there are other options to be able to tell Bing about your site or web page to help them find it, crawl it, and add it to their index.
You can submit your site or url to Bing here. Simple form, not much to it. It won’t happen quickly, but at least you are headed in the right direction for trying to rank in Bing.
If you have an xml site map for your site, I highly suggest you submit your site map, too.
Submitting your site map to Bing is a bit different.
You need to copy the query string below, paste it into your browser, and then change the “www.YourWebAddress.com” part to the web address of YOUR site map.
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml
Then, simply click “enter” like you were going to that web address. Bing will display a “thank you” message when it is complete. Complete instructions on how to submit your sitemap to Bing are here.
Ranking In Bing – How To Rank In Bing?
Right now, Bing seems to love pages on big sites that have lots of content. For example, Wikipedia pages sure seem to rank well in Bing which makes me think they like pages with LOTS of content and lots of links OUT.
Bing also seems to be liking many article directories and big content sites. And they seem to like older, more “aged” sites, too. In my testing I’ve seen many Wikipedia pages, articles on article directories, Squidoo lenses, eHow articles, news sites, and Blogger blogs ranking really well when, in my opinion, they might not be the best result for the query (just my personal opinion on that).
For a very popular and competitive phrase in our business, I saw TWO Blogger blogs ranking at the top in Bing – and neither of these two blogs show in the first two pages of a Google search for the same phrase. Odd – especially since Google OWNS Blogger/Blogspot.
While Google and Bing (and the current Yahoo) like keywords in the domain name – Bing seems to like hyphens a bit more than Google does. Again, just my observation…and the index at Bing is small and new so this is subject to change as their index size increases.
Bing also seems to not only love lots of content on a web page, but they seem to NEED it, too. In my niche site guide, I talked about a test I did with a totally BLANK website. Google loves it… the current Yahoo loves it…but Bing loves it NOT. There are no words to “read” to tell them what the page is about to help them decide how to rank it, I guess.
What About Backlinks… Does Bing Use Them To Rank Your Web Page?
Yes, Bing uses back links to rank your web pages in their index however, they don’t use them the way Google uses them as a ranking signal.
With Google, high-quality backlinks to your web page are really, really important – and they are one of the three most important ranking factors for Google (read about all three ranking factors for ranking in Google NOW here).
Google loves backlinks – it’s a major part of their patented Page Rank formula. The anchor text of your links plays a major part and so does getting links from .edu and .gov sites (read this to learn the easy way to find .edu sites and .gov sites for backlinks to your site).
Bing also likes backlinks, but Bing likes LOTS of links from LOTS of different domains. The anchor text of the link doesn’t seem to be as much of a factor, or a factor at all. I’m not quite sure Bing is “smart enough” to read anchor text of a text link and use it as a ranking signal for their index.
What they DO seem to do is count links from web pages that are on the same topic as the page being linked to. They seem to get that info from the words in the title tag of the page doing the linking.
For example, if you have a site about puppy training and someone links to YOUR site from their web page about dog training – regardless of HOW they links (click here, good anchor text, straight url…whatever), Bing seems to really value those kinds of links.
And again, they (Bing) seem to like LOTS of links from LOTS of different domains.
(that was a hint that they seem to like my article marketing strategy).
Here’s a little tip: As you find backlinks to your sites/pages, check and see if the url for the page linking TO you is already in the Bing index. If it’s NOT in the Bing index, submit it. That link won’t help your ranking in Bing if Bing doesn’t know about it.
How about another little tip?
Remember how I said I observed these different sites that Bing seems to really like right now? Try getting links on those sites to your web pages. Also, learn how to get links from .edu sites and .gov sites – I think those sites are considered authority sites that Bing will love, too.
For more tips on how to rank in Bing, Mark has a good blog post that you can read.
Focus On Bing SEO or Google SEO?
Bing is a different beast than Google… SEO and ranking are not the same.
We’ve talked about How Google works in this post (with a great flowchart type image to help understand it all)…and we’ve talked about Google’s latest big change, Google Caffeine, in this post called Google Caffeine – What It Means To YOU.
If you got this free report about how to rank in the “new” Google, then you know the 3 major factors that affect your Google rankings now…and how to make it all work for you. (by the way, that is a REALLY good free report. Be sure to print it out after you read it. It has a lot of info that you’ll want to keep at your fingertips like I do).
We talk a LOT about how to rank better in Google, but I’ve never talked before about ranking in Bing.
Last month (June 2010) Bing only accounted for 1.56% of my search engine traffic here at PotPieGirl.com – but so far this month, I’ve seen a nice jump in traffic from Bing…and I think it will continue this way. For some of my niche/info sites, Bing is already accountable for over 11% of my search engine traffic this month.
I think it’s time to start paying attention to Bing.
I’ll still be keeping my focus on ranking in Google, but I will start paying more attention to Bing ranking factors now, too. While one more thing to worry about is not overly welcome, when you’re in this business, you have to stay flexible and aware of what’s happening in the industry…and adjust accordingly.
Will YOU start paying more attention to optimizing for Bing traffic now?
Your thoughts?
awesome information as always –
thanks Jennifer
chad
Hi Jen,
Once again a great post. I had no idea about Bing and Yahoo joining forces together. I will definitely be checking this out. Thanks for all the tips!
Susan
Great post, and good of you to draw our attention to this fact. When I stop to think about it, I suppose it makes sense that Bing wants a piece of the pie. They have Microsoft, and now they’re beginning to compete with Google. At least we know, right?
Jennifer –
Great post – and I thought I was the only one thinking about this. I’ve just been hired to write up content for an SEO site that’s going up soon, and had to change my game plan regarding Yahoo! Site Explorer – and by the way, if you’ve been using YSE to check your backlinks (who doesn’t?), that’s going by the wayside, too.
So sayeth Aaron Wall of SEO Book, on this same subject.
You might want to look into blekko as well – that’s a pretty interesting little search engine. They’ll leave all their ranking factors open for all to see – that might be good or bad for SEOs and IMers…
Hiya James –
I’m thinking Yahoo Site Explorer will be gone by the time this change totally rolls out, too.
I wonder how much traffic Yahoo gets JUST from us folks checking out back links….lol!
If television product placement is any indication, Bing is becoming quite aggressive.
On two different television programs last week two characters were seen using the Bing search engine on their laptops. One of the characters even said that she “Binged” the information she was looking for.
I hear ya, Doiron – been noticing that too. Bing sure is trying to get their name out there.
Also, by branding themselves as the “Decision Engine”, I am SUPER curious to see how the market share % numbers look for December – the online shopping season.
I think it should prove to be quite interesting!
Great post at the perfect time! I was thinking on how to index my website in bing when I receive your email. Before this my website rank the first place in yahoo and 15 in google but in MSN, it is not indexed. After submitting the url, i got indexed in BING for fourth place. Thanks PPG!
Nice, pidi!
Ya know, maybe Bing is getting a bit faster. Heck, they already have this post sitting at #1 for “how to rank in bing”
Hi Jennifer,
Prior to reading your post, I also do not pay much attention to Yahoo and Bing.
Now, I have to make some changes to my backlinking campaign/SEO to make it more effective.
Thank you for this informative and valuable content.
After reading this post, I went and double-checked: yep, Bing loves and hates me!
Just read a good HubPages on ranking for Bing, quoting – as you do – from what Bing has said on their on-page SEO, and they suggest only optimizing for 1-2 keywords per page.
Moreover, I just did a submission using Magic Submitter, an SEnuke competitor, not 2 days ago. The good news?
My articles are on high-ranking, high PR directories, and are all over the first 3 pages of Google and #1, #3 and #9 in Bing!
OH YEAH BABY!
Gotta love Web 2.0 and mass submissions…
Thanks Jennifer,
Great ‘how to” information as always.
I know how I will be spending my morning!
Great info again PotPieGirl. Good to be well informed.
I like to use a couple of different keywordtools to do my research. They all have their own value, making life easier.
To find anchortexts for different search engines, I think that Keyword Elite is especially good for this particular job.
Just submit to the article directories and Bing will find you automatically without too much fuss.
Jennifer,
Thanks for the excellent information. I’ve tried Bing a few times and have not been impressed with it. But now I see I’ll need to pay it a bit more attention.
Thank you for taking time to inform us. I appreciate your efforts!
Thanks Jennifer..u give us great info as always..
Thanks Jennifer.
I immediately submitted my site map to bing as you instructed. For some reason, my sites have ranked well in yahoo but not bing. I need to get to work!
Thanks for the great info…I hadn’t been following this, my bad! I guess I better start to look beyond google! yikes! thanks again! Love your posts!
Tess@e-Edge
Re Bing and Yahoo showing the same results (or similar) – I am still seeing huge differences between my rankings in Yahoo and my rankings in Bing.
On some of my sites, I dominate the first three spots on Yahoo, on Google I am on the second page – and am no-where at all on Bing.
So I am obviously doing something that yahoo likes very much, but Bing doesn’t… I need to go away and analyse exactly what it is.
Thanks for the great info on Bing and Google ranking. The article link is quite good as well. Might put a few of these tips into practice. Thanks again!
Hi Jennifer
Great informative post as usual. The tidbit that you mention about Facebook using Bing search is very important. Marketing on Facebook has become big news lately and is worth understanding Bing better to tap into this market.
Thanks also for the steps and links to get your site indexed in Bing. Saves a lot of time.
David.
Yeah, I wrote an article for Examiner.com that drew in so much traffic from Bing.com I was astounded.
Since that day, I no longer ignore Bing.
Thanks for the reminder.
Bing and Yahoo, wow! This will give google some run for their money. e will see how this turns out. I am checking it out.
Hey Jennifer,
Great stuff. You’ve made a clear and compelling case for the need to start really paying attention to Bing SEO, so I definitely need to start working on this…
– Eric
Thanks a million for this Jennifer – extremely helpful info and is something that I would not have considered.
Another timely and informative post. I’m going to pass the url to this post along.
There’s been another writeup about this recently. Yes, I think that it needs some study, but when 88% of my traffic is coming from google organic results, and 21% is coming from direct referrers, I don’t think I’m going to stress over it yet. But submitting a sitemap to Bing seems to be an easy and wise thing to do ASAP for all my sites.
oh dear, I flunked math again. That should be 88% and 12%. 😉
I’ve been noticing Bing more and more because at least in my limited experience, Bing traffic converts at a FAR higher % than any other traffic I receive. Whether it’s AdSense or affiliate sales, traffic I get from Bing tends to convert really, really well. I wonder if this is because of Bing’s marketing as a decision engine, so people using this search engine are looking to buy already, which makes it really good traffic. I’ll definitely be looking to increase by Bing rankings, because those pages have been very good to me so far 🙂 Great post!
Don’t worry about the math, BJ, if you didn’t point it out, I never woulda noticed it…lol!
What Shane said about Bing traffic and better conversions is an important point. Now, while my sites haven’t gotten much traffic from Bing, I also have not worked to position myself well in Bing, either.
As I poked thru a lot of stats for my sites, I have noticed on my info sites some interesting stats as far as traffic from Bing:
1. The bounce rate is lower than Yahoo or Google.
2. The time on site is HIGHER than that for Yahoo and Google traffic.
3. Bing traffic seems to read more pages on site than those from Y or G.
Now, one info site gets over 71% of it’s traffic from Google and only 11% from Bing. HOWEVER, that same site ranks well for 136 keywords in Google…and only 21 keywords in Bing (and a measly 12 keywords in Yahoo).
What would happen if I worked to position myself better in Bing AND for more keywords?
I can tell you that right off, without work, I will soon have 21 keywords in Bing AND 21 keywords in Yahoo sending traffic since claims are that they will both share the same search results when this is all said and done. That’s an instant traffic increase right there.
With the holiday online shopping season starting soon, this is something I am going to work on for my “commercial intent” sites because, as Shane pointed out, that Bing traffic may already be in buying mode more than that from G or Y due to the simple way Bing is marketed to consumers.
Thoughts?
Timely headsup on this. Thank you for watching out for us – how do you find the time? Certainly when they join force they will be the force.
Thanks for all the great tips you provide.
Very comprehensive information!
I’ve never really focused on Bing. A lot of the SEO I do for Google naturally gets picked up and ranks my sites well in Yahoo…well, at least it did, until now.
Not only do we need to make some minor changes to accommodate for the Caffeine update, but also now this Yahoo/Bing update.
It’s like doing chores around the house…the list never ends!!!
Thanks Jennifer!
Wow, That’s interesting to know that traffic from bing has a lower bounce rate. (Well, i guess that’s why they call it the decision engine – its targeted to consumers who are sincerely looking for immediate answers to their problems.)
Ok, Here is how i view all this so that i am not overwhelmed.
1. You don’t have to worry too much about ranking in google as long as you implement PPG’s “set and forget” aticle markting/backlink stretegy. And if you implement the backlinking strategy from ryan deiss’ “authority code” – (10 .edu/.gov backlinks), you should be fine – At least in google.
2. With all that done, you can now focus your atention on how to rank on bing.
Personally, though, i think google will still be the dominant SE for a very, very long time. Google is way too complex and advance that it will take alot for some other SE to just come and take over.
awesome Post -Thanks Jennifer
Awesome information….
I have some new sites and I am revamping some of my old sites to be a little more Google friendly, but now I know that I have a little more to do and it comes at a great time….
Always enjoy your information and look forward to the next article.
Well, now at least I finally understand what all these bizarre TV commercials advertising Bing are all about……lol
Thank you so much for all the insight and updates that you provide us with. There sure is a lot to keep up with in this business.
Dee
Thanks Jennifer. It worked for one of the websites I submitted! I was indexed right away. I instantly hit #2 spot for a very popular keyword.
Great Post Jennifer
I have seen studies that show that Bing users are also more apt to click on ads. And if they are more apt to click on ads, they are also more apt to purchase your affiliate products.
I personally like Bing better than Google. In my own personal searches, it will give me more relavent replies. I have been doing the exact search on Google and on Bing for the same thing and Bing will have the content I am looking for in first or second place where Google has it on the second page. So for me to personally find things – I use Bing.
This may well change when the SEO tricks are discovered for Bing as the first page on Google is from people using SEO to give results that may not be what you are really looking for just close.
The big question in backlinks is whether Bing will give them the ‘weight’ from comments, postings, and such. Google gives these (or at least seems to) a pretty good ‘weight’ for these. It does seem that Bing will not give you any love for making a “link wheel’.
Thank you for the info, it seems that we need to start making bing luvs us too… which is hard…
Jen,
Funny how I’m breaking a Bing rule here with my comment information 🙂
Anyways, this information on how to rank in Bing is great, I have always worked on Google rankings and let the Yahoo and Bing traffic be gravy.
Unfortunately, I’m going to have to keep working that way in the short term because I just have my hands full with working on new sites and Google. This is a great post to bookmark and save for future reference.
Brenda
My blogs, for each 50 visits they receive coming from the search engines, 49 come from google and 1 comes from bing or yahoo.
However; i have to say that this article is very interesting, maybe the alliance between yahoo and bing will improve their performance
I guess I just haven’t figured out the Bing thing yet because my sites will rank in google but be so slooooooooow to rank in Bing. I also hope that the alliance will make good changes for those of us who are trying to rank in all engines.
Submitting your blog to search confirms more traffic to your site.
Now even Bing has launched its new Bing webmaster tools.
I need a step by step SEO guideines Can you help me???
From my own experience I usually get results faster with Bing and Yahoo then with G finally coming along. I do quite well in Bing and haven’t had any issues with ranking with them. Yahoo is not too bad but it has the most discrepancy regarding search results sometimes showing completely different results than in Bing And G. I myself still am not convinced if they (Yahoo or Bing) will be a major player but I recommend not ignoring them for sure. Though I primarliy focus my efforts on G… I find that the users differ from each search engine in regards to mindset and habit. I’m not sure exactly what that means bu the Yahoo and Bing crowd seem to be more patient and willing to dig a little more into the information than the fickle Google crowd. My two cents.
This post was just what I was looking for. I’ve been wondering how to get BIng to index my site! I’m going to link to this post in every forum I’m a member of .. thank you!
My blog ranks consistently high on Google’s pages, but drops to page 8 on Bing, unless one types in very specific tags and language. Thanks for the info. I entered my URL, link extensively to important sites, and generally have already done what you suggested. As you said, Bing likes large sites, and mine is small potatoes.
I want to add one more observation. At work we joke that Bing is great for shoppers and travelers, but if one wants to find meatier more scholarly sites, then Google will help you find them faster.
There’s a fundamental flaw, if I should call it that, with almost all search engines trying to compete with Google: they try to be Google. If Yahoo/Bing wants to beat Google or at least take a good bite off the pie, they should try to be unique and better. Copying Google’s methodologies and algorithms just won’t do. They should strive to present better results in both relevancy and content. They should take a hint (Bing seems to be getting it from what you describe in the article though its still too early to tell) and not rank blank pages or link pages as Google tends to do (again, from your own example).
Thanks for the heads up. Maybe I can get ahead of the curve for a change!
I want to add one more observation. At work we joke that Bing is great for shoppers and travelers, but if one wants to find meatier more scholarly sites, then Google will help you find them faster
My site already has 700+ pages indexed by Google, but only 2 pages in Bing. It feels kinda sucks…
I started by properly learning how to read a dog food label. There are many tricks and frankly deceptive practices that make it a priority to learn how to read a label. Here is a shortened version of that process to help you get started. The first set of labeling rules comes from the FDA and must list the following information:
Great read. Very insightful. Thanks.
I have to admit to ignoring active SEO for Bing. With the combined marketshare though at around 30% it’s time to rethink that. Fortunately, article marketing provides for a diverse set of backlinks and sites like Ezine and Squidoo have excellent domain authority, which adds clout to the links.
Some really interesting points to your article. I guess its time to learn about SEO for Bing if this is going to be the source for two search engines. Together they make up a large majority.
Excellent article. Was wondering why a few of the websites we had were just not making it on Bing! Thank you for the time spent on researching and writing this article.
Faisal
Jennifer great info, I have a hard enough time keeping up with Google. You know, that learning curve that you talk about. Ughhh…
Thanks for the heads up. Maybe I can get ahead of the curve for a change!
i didnt read all of the comments, so im sorry if someone already posted this…but…
when we do things for google, the way we have been taught, do you think any of that will harm us?
i get what you are saying about back links and traffic and what-not…but do you think doing seo for google will hurt us in the long run?
and i will say this, i checked some of the keywords i used. what shows up in google is not the same as what shows up in bing and/or yahoo… but, i did everything the exact same way… nothing is linked to anything different…
for now, i dont think this is a huge problem, i think we should learn more about it and test test test!!!
thanks PPG for everything!
Thanks for sharing that info. I just submitted my url to Bing (it wasn’t there).
Wow! Lots of food for thought. I had just noticed this evening that I’m getting more traffic from bing. Some of my posts must be ranking there but for my major key words (for which I rank fairly well in google) I’m on the 5th page in just about the same spot on bing and yahoo. And the rest of the rankings and mix are very different from the google results. I had paid zero attention to any of this until just checking after reading your post and watching the video.
I think anything that spreads the search engine wealth around is extremely valuable. All the eggs in the google basket is not a good thing.
Liz