SEO usually is synonymous for “SEO for Google” and frankly if you optimize your website for Google, you’ll generally do well in most search engines but sometimes Bing won’t follow suit and you might miss out on some rankings which you could take with a little bit of more effort.
I’m listing some of the observations that I have made lately which Bing considers for search ranking. Please note these factors are in addition to the usual “On Page” and “Off Page” optimization things that you do for Google such as unique content and more of it, back links with matching anchor texts, good hierarchical internal linking structure and so on.
Factors to consider for optimization for Bing search engine
- A matching domain name for the searched keyword usually gets higher ranking in Bing.
- Bing likes Titles and matching Meta Description so make sure you use your best keywords in both of these tags. Unique Titles and Description tags for each story/article will go a long way getting you on first page in Bing.
- Bing places heavy emphasis on permanent search engine friendly links covering sections and categories in the URL structure. So make sure that you have SEF links for each of your landing pages and articles pages.
- Bing seems to give more importance to web pages with much more (relevant) outbound links. Although Google does the same but for Google one has to be cautious with outbound links. That’s the only mutually exclusive thing in my view.
- Don’t forget to submit xml site maps to Bing on this webmaster tools page. A standard sitemap must be added on website and it works for every search engine! Webmasters usually forget after submitting xml sitemaps in Google webmaster tools that they need to put a standard sitemap page (and keep it updated) for normal web users too. Best solution is to make sitemap generation dynamic and part of the CMS to keep sitemap page updated.
- Another factor that weighs heavily for Bing is the “Domain Age” and since you can’t do anything about it, so just wait for a while if you have brand new domain name.
Hope these tips help you get higher in Bing SERPs.
Cheers!
