Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Five Site Optimization Techniques For Ranking Higher in Bing and Yahoo Search Engines

By Eric McGuire


I should apologize in advance as the title is a touch misleading since Bing now powers the Yahoo search results so by optimizing for Bing, you immediately optimize for Yahoo.

Bing is Microsoft's 3rd attempt at building a search portal that would contend with Google. First they had MSN, then Live and now Bing. Looking at my Analytics logs which show that from the last 10,000+ visitors over 90% came from Google, I'd say that Bing is making as much inroads as MSN and Live.

However, Bing still has hundreds of millions of searches each month so here are 4 tips for boosting your Bing rankings:

On-page Optimization is Vital

Bing in particular says that your website should use completely valid code (run it through a code validator), employ correct redirects, have no broken links and used static pages where ever possible "which suggests you are going to want to rewrite those URLs if you are using a dynamically generated site. Bing also gives preference to title and H1 tags, so be sure you use them in your site!

Quality and Similar Inbound Links

Relevant is the keyword here. Bing allegedly tries to pinpoint the subject of a site by picking up topic specific keywords. Links to your site from other similar sites looks to play an important role here.

Bing Website owner Center

Just like Google, Bing has its own Web master Center where you can submit your URL and Bing will tell you any issues that its robot encounters. This can be anything from bloated file sizes (Bing likes small files) to dead links. You may find out the sites Bing has found linking to you and the sites you are linking too "check these to determine if you are getting quality topic specific links to your site!

Content

They've always said that content is king and Bing appears to like all kinds of content, particularly videos, Flash and text. If you are going for a text based website, ensure your content is at least 300+ words long and centered around a single subject, the Bing web-master guiding principles make it clear that they hate it if you talk of a range of topics "which is sad news for the front page of a personal blog!

Domain Age

Search sites like to attempt to build authority and a technique to do this is to take in to consideration the domain age. A domain and website which has been online for many years is seemingly more valuable and trustworthy to Bing than a new site on a new domain, so time to check the GoDaddy expiring domains list!

In the end, enhancing for Bing is not very dissimilar to Google, so optimising for one should help you out in the other since neither asks if you can do something which conflicts with the information of the other.




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