Even though Google is still the largest search engine and most SEO guides tend to focus specifically on ranking for Google, Bing has continued to gain popularity over the years, becoming the second most favoured search engine on the Internet.
Since Bing gets the second highest amount of search traffic and also powers Yahoo, optimizing your website for Bing can help expand the reach of your website. As digital marketing experts, they know how to SEO your website for Bing to increase website traffic and reach a larger target audience.
In most cases, you will be able to optimize your website for Bing using the same SEO techniques for optimizing your website for Google; however, while most ranking factors tend to be consistent across both search engines, you can ensure that your website is properly SEOd for Bing by doing the following:
1. Claim Your Bing Places for Business Listing
Bing Places for Business is a local directory that you can use for free to provide your business with substantial local exposure. Similar to claiming your Google My Business listing, claiming your business on both Bing and Yahoo can help your website rank better in local search results.
Once you have claimed your Bing Places for Business listing, you will need to optimize the listing by entering in relevant information, such as business description, product or service information, hours of operations, and contact information. When optimizing your Bing Places for Business listing, make sure to provide as much information about your business as possible.
2. Make Sure Your Site is Being Indexed
The first step in gaining website traffic from Bing is to ensure that your website is being properly indexed. In order to submit your website to Bing, login to Bing’s Webmaster Tools using a Microsoft account and enter in a link to your website’s XML sitemap. Bing will then provide you with a code that will need to be copy and pasted into a section of your website, verifying your ownership.
While Bing does not update their index as often as Google, once your website is registered, your website should be indexed within a matter of a few minutes and you will start to see a change in website traffic.
3. Use Exact Keywords
Compared to Google’s sophisticated search algorithm, Bing still relies on some old factors, such as optimizing your website with exact match keywords rather than focusing on Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. Consider using exact keywords in headings and throughout the content on your website as naturally as possible to avoid keyword stuffing. Make sure to also sprinkle keywords throughout meta titles and meta descriptions, as compelling titles can help increase your click-through-rate (CTR) and improve both your Bing and Google search engine rankings.
4. Connect to Social Networks
Since Bing uses social shares to understand if a website page is popular among users, connecting to social networks can help your organic rankings, while also allowing users to easily share your content; however, it is important to note that gaining too many followers too fast can negatively impact your search engine rankings, as Bing might view these followers as fake.
5. Create High-Quality Content
Bing favours websites that have unique, high-quality content geared towards providing answers to common queries by users. In order to determine the quality of a website’s content, Bing will focus on the authority, utility, and presentation of the content. Content that does not meet Bing’s standards will have a hard time ranking well in search results.
To make sure that your website content meets Bing’s standards, make sure that it:
- Mentions the content author and states sources for any information used
- Provides a detailed answer to a common query that will be useful to readers
- Is formatted and presented with a clear structure
Optimizing your website for Bing can help you increase website traffic and reach a larger target audience. If you would like to learn more about how to SEO your website for Bing, get in touch with the SEO experts today.