SEO for Bing

[Jason C]

So I heard around the grapevine that Yahoo is currently changing its seach algorithm to use Bing's search algorithm by august/september.

I know quite a few of us arent ranking well in Bing search (I am one of them). But I do rank well in yahoo for a few keywords. If this switch does indeed take place, we will loose our Yahoo traffic. But, if you rank well in Bing, you could see a surge in traffic.

So my question is, anyone have any good SEO tips for Bing? Seems like we know what google likes, but Bing is such a mystery...........


Here is a Microsoft blog post going into further detail:

[gubugnet]

IMO bing likes

1. Exact match in the domain name or kw sub in front structured.
2. KW in Title
3. main Kw Density of 6% or less
4. Nofollow links probably have more juice but Unique IP for links probably matters more meaning it is not as easy to build links on the same IP as in Google + you might get more brownie points for more Unique class C IPs.
NOTE: You can kind of tell this because a trick I like to do to get more info researching Niches and or grabbing some ideas from profitable guys is to get the ip of a website and drop it into Bing in order to find other niches they are into on that server
example:
ip:xx.xx.xx.xxx
this is sometimes helpful but really smart guys dont drop all their stuff or their money sites anywhere near the same servers. There are other reasons I do this sometimes especially in arcades.
5. regularly updated content matters more especially they seem to like video content
( Everyone is threatened by FB and search engines turning into hybrid social engines )
6. RUMORS: I hear they like pages off of larger sites
Examples:
Amazon,IMDB etc....
( Find large blogs and article sites and get noticed maybe easier )
RUMOR #2: I hear they like capitalization of all things
( Good news for English majors LOL )
There might be something to this for kicks I searched on Bing for brownie points and you can see a lot of these factors mentioned above in action there.

That is a combination of things I heard in the wind and stuff I noticed with trial and error but at this point their traffic is less than 12% of Big G traffic in most every niche and for more obscure stuff less than 5% I would say.Also really as long as Google is the leader they want try for very different results infact they will strive for very similar results fidgeting with weights a bit just to see if they can be more current or relivent to the search IMO.

[cheekugames]

I never use bing , but after reading the post i made a few searches in bing, and i immediately realised why google is the king when i searched for a key word,many results on page one itself where "related" to the keyword i had made search for but "not the one's" i was looking for, while on google all the search results on each and every page were related to what i was looking for, for example when i made a search for kids games, bing showed many results from yahoo games and also many unrelated results, while google showed the most popular sites and most popular games for kids.

So i do believe that optimising for bing is good, but goolge will remain the overwhelming choice for users.

Regards
Cheeku

[internetsell10]

I always optimize my sites for google .I thinks bing would start to give importance your site once you would start your link building ..bing is very easy to rank for

[Jason C]

I always optimize my sites for google .I thinks bing would start to give importance your site once you would start your link building ..bing is very easy to rank for

This is the thing, for my main target keyword I rank pretty decently in google (#14) and rising but on Bing I'm nowhere to be found......at all. Yahoo is another story and it looks like yahoo picked me up and Im getting better results.

Its true google takes up about 75% of the search market but once Im done with google I can tap these other search markets also and Bing is rising in popularity. I actually get a lot of search engine traffic from Bing but its from my domain they search so this tells me I should try to rank for Bing also.

Alfred, excellent post you made as always, especially the trick with the IP address. Im aware that its best to get links from other IP address other than multiple sites on the same IP address.......actually you better believe google is cracking down on this to.

[PeterWalker]

Bing's recent criteria is totally different from Google, going for Bing criteria could mean a drop in Google rankings. That's my opinion.

[kylekanwar]

Ya it take lot of time for pages to index on bing , i have submit my xml sitemaps to bing webmaster tools , Hope now will get good result , you can try that..

[gubugnet]

OK you know what I been looking at bing a bit and I might tinker with them some more when I have time. I noticed something and this might interest you guys.

Bing seems to love EMD: Exact match Keyword Domain ( you are reading on one now ). OK nothing earth shattering there and every search engine does. The reason is that you can do a lot of magic with link building or onsite SEO and everything else but I bet you will have a hard time getting cat lovers to come to a site named
ilovedogs.com
So the EMD is a great Chess move and after all one of the purposes of your domain is to define your sites purpose and content.
NOW FOR MY RUMOR: OK this rumor might be somewhere else but I set running searches and examining Bing for some time and this is what I noticed. Bing looks at the GEO of a TLD and weighs it pretty heavy accordingly.

OK information and a hypothesis is cool but let me share how I WILL test this at a point and try to make change off of it if it works. Lets say Bing loves TLD by Geo OK now time to pound the pavement and do some research.

1. Find an offer that only works with USA traffic
( CPA most likely and build an arcade that compliments the niche )
2. Most offers in CPA love and want USA traffic so that is why I said that to make it easier to find something.
3. My other reason is based on this research
These are Geo breakdowns:

Source: iwantmyname.com/blog/2009/10/country-code-top-level-domain-cctld-ranking-numbers-statistics.htm
.DE (Germany) - 13.05 million
.CN (China) - 12.54 million
.UK (United Kingdom) - 7.83 million
.NL (Netherlands) - 3.51 million
.EU (European Union) - 2.98 million
.RU (Russia) - 2.31 million
.TK (Tokelau) - 1.97 million
.AR (Argentina) - 1.85 million
.BR (Brazil) - 1.81 million
.IT (Italy) - 1.72 million
.US (USA) - 1.63 million

OK now lets compare that to the big 3

.COM: 82.01 million
.NET: 12.42 million
.ORG: 7.79 million
Also for Giggles as my Brother often says:
.INFO: 5.24 million

OK now if my theory is worth a hill of beans LOL then armed with these numbers and a hypothesis you should be able to find some EMD real easy and tie it to a niche or offer and get some love from Bing. Let us suppose my hypothesis is wrong here ( could be LOL ) but you still just got some nice numbers to look at and make picking out an EMD outside of the big 3 easier.

OK a word of caution " A little knowledge is a dangerous thing ". Even if the theory is right and the largest reason that I believe it to be so is because this would be a cool chess move from bing to get the best site in a particular Geo in front of the right person. You will still have to research a less than UBER competitive KW and you will still need onsite SEO + Backlinks. Also as pointed out you might do well in that Geo ALONE in Bing ALONE and it only constitutes 7 - 10% of the traffic at this point.

Maybe the start of a rumor here first. Also another word of caution even if the GEO theory is right by the time enough guys realize it Big Bill will change the ratios + my posting it on a public forum want help much either LOL.

[inok]

Here are some ways to optimize for Bing:

1) Focus on categories presented for your most key search terms. Use Bing’s categories in your key words and in your site navigation.

2) Domain Age is very important. Building micro-sites off your main site vs. independent new sites is key for Bing. Additional findings for Bing thus far.

3) Text Rules
Bing favors pages with at least 300 words of text.

4) Linking Out
Bing favors linking out more than other engines as long as the links are relevant to the overall context of the site and keywords.


5) News Sites vs. Blogs
Bing favors news source sites over blogs especially for breaking news, although major blogs are recognized by Bing as major news sources. Blogs with less significant traffic are not.

[arcadeguy]

google the best.
bing's crawl rate is not good with some small countries