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Search Engine Optimization For Bing

With recent Microsoft – Yahoo deals which combine their search and advertising abilities, there are large consequences for many webmasters. For me personally, I have ignored MSN, Live, and even the recent Bing for so long. It seems like a little too much problem to search-engine optimize my websites for such a small target audience of Microsoft search engines. Visitors from Microsoft search engines (whatever the name is) in my sites accounts for less than 10%, across all sites. Google generally make up about 60%-70%. There are exceptions, however. Some sites have more visitors from Yahoo than from Google.

However, now that Yahoo is going to hand their search capability to Microsoft Bing, it becomes essential that we take steps to ensure that our websites are ready for the change. Bing also seems to be well received by more Internet users, and there is possibility that they might be able to gain some market share from Google.

Generally, search engine optimization is almost the same, regardless which search engine you want to optimize for. However, there are also some additional details you need to take care of.

Here are some search engine optimization tips for Bing

1. Contents
Contents are king. Good contents are what differentiate good websites from the bad. Even if you disregard all other optimization tips below, you will still get much ahead compared than if you get all those below but neglect to have good contents in your site. Search engines want to be useful to the users so they can gain more and more market share. They want to find good contents that can satisfy and match the users need. All other criteria are actually additional way to find out how good and important a page is.

Good contents are:
1. Unique, not copied or duplicate from other sites
2. Useful and interesting information for website visitors
3. With more than 300 words of content (specially for Bing)

2. Page title
In all major search engines, page title is among the most important part of Search Engine optimization. However, it seems somehow that Bing pays more attention to the page title compared with other search engines. Order of the words does not matter much, but you must make sure to place your most important keywords of each page to the page title. Limit your page title to 80 characters the most. Shorter page title means higher importance on each word. And get different page title for each page. Concentrating on just a few key phrase will not get you a lot of visitors, even if each of them rank first. This concept is something called as long tail optimization.

Here is some additional tips from Bing webmaster community about page title:
-The closer a word is to the start, the more heavily weighted it is as a keyword. This is true for the bot as well as the reader.
– Keep the title text between 5 and 65 characters in length
– For greatest efficiency and consistency, write titles using this syntax: keyword phrase, category, website title (or brand)
– Make the title text unique on every page
– Do not use any of the following special characters in title text: ‘”{}[]()

3. Page URL: Domain name, sub-domain, folder name and file name
Yahoo and Bing place specially high importance on the page URL compared to Google. Try search hotels in dublin in Bing. Notice that 9 out of 10 results on the first page have the words hotel and dublin in the URL, while the only other one has the word dublin even though it does not contain the word hotel. Try the same search for hotels in dublin in Google. Notice now there are 7 results with the word “hotel” and “dublin” in URL, one result with the word “hotel”, while the other two does not have any of the word “hotel” or “dublin” in the URL.

Domain name is not something you can choose over and over or create one for each keyword, so if you have not started your site yet, think and choose a domain name that is most appropriate for your niche. That should be for your most important keyword/key phrase. If you have started the website and the domain name isn’t that ideal, then be it. You’ll be more than make up for it if you follow these search engine optimization tips.

Sub-domains and folder names are most appropriate for sub-category within your niche.

File name will the most specific keyword for each page, it should be somewhere along the page title. I would recommend slight variation from the page title to get the maximum result.

For example, if your website is about hotel, and one of your target market is hotels in dublin, the ideal URL would be dublin(dot)hotel(dot)com/compare.html for comparison between dublin hotels and dublin(dot)hotel(dot)com/information.html for information about dublin hotels. Of course, most of such domain names has been taken long ago, so you got to use some creativity in choosing a good domain name.

There are arguments on which one is more important between sub-domain and folder. I say, it is up to you. These are mere tools, you can choose to use either sub-domain or folder name. Or you can choose using both of them. Remember though, try to keep the URL as short as possible. Search engines loves short URL.

4. Link back and Link out
Link-back remains one of the most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. Some webmasters swears by “If content is king, then link-back is the queen”. Link-back, or sometimes called inbound link, means the hyperlinks from other websites to our sites. Natural links from other sites (when they link to us in their article) without any reciprocal link (us linking back to them in return) remains the best valued link back.

One of the most effective way to build link backs is by submitting articles to article directory such as ArticlesBase. You get some credibility as well as link back at the same time.

Other methods like web directory submission or link exchange is still useful, even though it is having much less influence on Google. Bing is less stringent compared to Google for what constitute as valid link-back, so every link back to your site counts. However, remember that while it is easier for you to accumulate link-back, so are your competitors.

The most valuable links are not those link to your homepage, but linking to specific internal pages. That is called deep-linking.

Aside from link-back to your website, link-out (also called outbound links) to reputable sources is also a good way to improve your site ranking. Do a research and be careful of who you link to. You do not want to link to websites frowned upon by search engines. For example search for “site:cheatad.com” in all Google, Yahoo and Bing. You’ll see there are pages indexed in all 3 search engines. If you see that a specific website does not have any page indexed, steer clear of them. Either those are new websites (which do not have much reputation point to pass anyway) or bad websites.

5. Use Bing Webmaster Center
Following Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer path, Bing have Webmaster Center for webmasters to manage and review their website and Search Engine Optimization effectiveness. In the Webmaster Center, you can submit your website and sitemap, diagnose crawling issues, as well as review back-links and outbound links.

6. Meta tags: Meta Description and Meta Keywords
By now, these are considered ancient techniques already. Do not bother too much with those, unless you have extra spare times.

Well, try the simple techniques above and your website will get much ahead in a very short time.

Bing – Importance on Search Engine Optimization

In the search engine wars, Microsoft has been nowhere to be found when it comes to market share.  In fact, they nearly spent over billion to buy Yahoo which is a distant competitor to Google which owns about a 75% market share of searches.  Why?  The search business is very profitable for the companies in the industry and for the companies, hopefully like yours, that show up on the first page of search results because that is where the customer decides who wins and who loses in the battle for their business dollars.  In the latest battle for search engine market share, Microsoft has launched a new search engine called Bing and everyone is reviewing the information.  
Search engine optimization is critical for any business because SEO, acronym for search engine optimization, is how your business shows up when a potential customer enters a query on Google, Yahoo, or now Bing.  As you’ve heard me say in other articles, search engines are the yellow pages of today; just the order that your business is found is based on importance and not how much money you’ve spent with that advertiser.  In terms of search engine optimization on Bing, I found our www.nvhost.com websites in similar positions as our sites are found on the other search engines so it wasn’t any different for us – I advise you to do the same testing for your key words to see how you come up in their search results.  
What is the consumer reason for Bing and how has it been reviewed so far?  If you visit Bing.com, you will find a link to an explanation of why this new search engine is important for consumers.  It offers the usual rationale that its search results are more reliable or more relevant to consumers but could they really say anything different?  Like MSN, they also have some discussion about how the search engine will provide financial incentives or better deals to visitors.  Unfortunately, those potential incentives have not brought me to use MSN for searches and they will not bring me to Bing either.  In terms of reviews, most “geeks” would rather compliment mass murders than behemoth Microsoft so I don’t put a lot of stock into most reviews because of this lack of objectivity.  In my opinion, Google is still offering a superior search engine product by having search results focused on keywords that can have a local tie in if you are searching for local services – like dry cleaners.  While they aren’t a primary source for the information for me, I also prefer the news sections and how simply they are organized on Google.  
The big so what on Bing is that we now have another search engine to check as we make sure to search engine optimize our websites.  Microsoft has very deep pockets and is very willing to launch products while losing money, learn about the consumer product experience, and then make adjustments to gain market share.  This search engine does offer pay per click marketing opportunities but I haven’t had a chance to test their PPC system to offer an opinion on it yet.  Using the 80/20 rule, I typically stick with Google because of their very high market share which means I will reach the most potential customers on one site.  Microsoft has been very focused on Google as their primary competitor in recent years and the attractive PPC revenues will be the reason that Bing will be around and revamped for several years unless Microsoft makes an acquisition in this category.  As a full search web development company that offers website design and search engine optimization services, we will continue to monitor the development of Bing as a search engine to make sure our search engine optimization services and our website design will be friendly to the search engine.  If you have any questions, please visit us at www.nvhost.com and use our live chat feature or contact us form.

Dallas Search Engine Optimization: Get Your Own Place at Bing

Dallas Search Engine Optimization: Get Your Own Place at Bing 

By now, you’ve mastered search engine optimization (SEO) for both Google and Yahoo so well that you know it like a back of your hand. However, with the introduction of Bing in your search engine list, you may have to take SEO from scratch, as it offers a whole new way in optimizing your website.  

Why You Should Add Your Website to Bing 

Before we get into details on the different SEO tips for Bing, you have to understand first the reason why you should consider this search engine besides Google and Yahoo. Like the two mega engines, Bing is also huge. After all, it’s made by Microsoft. Even if Bing is relatively new, its maker has been around for so many years. It is a very stable company, and it won’t be long before this search engine becomes so huge, giving Google a run for its money. While it’s still young, you can take advantage and be one of those websites that are indexed first here.  

Bing SEO Tips 

If you want to rank highly at Bing, consider doing the following: 

1. Buy an older domain for your website. Bing seems to favor those websites whose domains have been around for years. A good explanation for this is that only real, legitimate websites would be able to survive for quite a time. On the other hand, newer websites have to prove themselves that they are not spammy websites or created for scams.  

2. Have your web pages validated. It’s also important that the HTML codes are flawless. There should be no mistakes to make sure that the Bing spiders would be able to crawl and index your pages properly. You may be able to verify it using the markup validation service of W3C. You can also use HTTP compression tool. This also means that you have to be very careful when you’re creating the codes. You also need to check the links. Make sure that you don’t have broken or dead ones.  

3. Make your contents a lot longer. While Google and Yahoo don’t really mind if a page contains a hundred words or less, Bing puts emphasis on the number of words you have. Perhaps it simply wants to ensure that Internet users would be able to obtain sufficient amount of information from your web page. At the very least, go for a 350-word copy for your pages.  

4. Make your links static. This means that they don’t change every time the pages are closed and opened again by Internet users. It will be very difficult for spiders to index these types of destinations. The links, moreover, should be simple and easy to remember.  

Not all people are familiar with Bing, so you may end up spending a lot of your time learning SEO here. To save time, you can rely on the expertise of Dallas search engine optimization professionals. The SEO company may have spent a good amount of time training in specialized SEO, so you know that your website is in good hands.   

How To Add Your Website To Search Engines ? Google, Bing & Yahoo By Sam’s Web Guide

This is a quick tutorial done by Sam’s Web Guide on how to submit your websites to 3 of the major search engines – Google, Bing & Yahoo

It is very important to get your website listed in the major search engines. This is a basic free submission that allows web users to access your website through organic search, provided that their search keywords match the ‘crawler accessible’ content you have on your site and your website has already been crawled and indexed. (We will discuss key word selection and search engine optimization in another post) A crawler/bot is a term used for search engine applications that search the web in a methodical and automatic manner for websites and new content and creates an index of the sites found. A copy of your site is actually stored on the search engine servers for easy access later.

Let’s get to it:

For Google Submissions go to www.google.com/addurl/ and simply add your site in the form provided, as shown below.

Once you have entered your site’s URL, hit the submit button and you will be good to go.

An important note: It is not guaranteed that your site will be crawled immediately, or as stated by the search engines – “any at all” considering that there are millions of sites on the web and once you submit your site, the request gets placed in a queue. Generally, with my experience, they always do eventually crawl sites submitted. It could takes weeks before your site shows up in searches though.

Tip: Using the google webmaster tools and submitting a site map there will help google to index your site much faster. After creating a webmaster tools profile for your site here: www.google.com/webmasters select your site’s profile name and then at the lower right corner of the page you will see a link to submit a sitemap.

On Google’s submission site, you will find lots of other useful links and guidelines on how to manage your web presence and the associated rules. I chose to refer to Google first because they have the most in-depth explanations of the different web standards and how to ensure that your website is a success through search. Very user-friendly.

For Bing.com Submissions, Microsoft’s search brand, go to www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx. The Bing brand is fairly new, but it does the job.

For Yahoo.com Submissions go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit.

Once you have submitted your site you are on your way to getting new visitors to your site. Do not take search for granted or rely on search alone to bring new site viewers though, as web search can be more competitive than what’s seen on the surface.

There are thousands of search engines active on the internet and manual submission on all may not be possible and some search engines are for specific types of content. If you wish to find more search engines, simply search for them or you may visit Search Engine Watch to see a more in-depth listing.

Please subscribe to our RSS Feed and stay up to date with our new blog posts on Sam’s Web Guide. In the coming weeks we will be discussing Search Engine Optimization, Web Do’s & Dont’s, Beautiful Web Design and much more.

Search Engine Optimization Tips For Bing

Search Engine Optimization Tips For Bing

With recent Microsoft – Yahoo deals which combine their search and advertising abilities, there are large consequences for many webmasters. For me personally, I have ignored MSN, Live, and even the recent Bing for so long. It seems like a little too much problem to search-engine optimize my websites for such a small target audience of Microsoft search engines. Visitors from Microsoft search engines (whatever the name is) in my sites accounts for less than 10%, across all sites. Google generally make up about 60%-70%. There are exceptions, however. Some sites have more visitors from Yahoo than from Google.

However, now that Yahoo is going to hand their search capability to Microsoft Bing, it becomes essential that we take steps to ensure that our websites are ready for the change. Bing also seems to be well received by more Internet users, and there is possibility that they might be able to gain some market share from Google.

Generally, search engine optimization is almost the same, regardless which search engine you want to optimize for. However, there are also some additional details you need to take care of.

Here are some search engine optimization tips for Bing

1. Contents

Contents are king. Good contents are what differentiate good websites from the bad. Even if you disregard all other optimization tips below, you will still get much ahead compared than if you get all those below but neglect to have good contents in your site. Search engines want to be useful to the users so they can gain more and more market share. They want to find good contents that can satisfy and match the users need. All other criteria are actually additional way to find out how good and important a page is.

Good contents are:

1. Unique, not copied or duplicate from other sites

2. Useful and interesting information for website visitors

3. With more than 300 words of content (specially for Bing)

2. Page title

In all major search engines, page title is among the most important part of Search Engine optimization. However, it seems somehow that Bing pays more attention to the page title compared with other search engines. Order of the words does not matter much, but you must make sure to place your most important keywords of each page to the page title. Limit your page title to 80 characters the most. Shorter page title means higher importance on each word. And get different page title for each page. Concentrating on just a few key phrase will not get you a lot of visitors, even if each of them rank first. This concept is something called as long tail optimization.

Here is some additional tips from Bing webmaster community about page title:

-The closer a word is to the start, the more heavily weighted it is as a keyword. This is true for the bot as well as the reader.

- Keep the title text between 5 and 65 characters in length

- For greatest efficiency and consistency, write titles using this syntax: keyword phrase, category, website title (or brand)

- Make the title text unique on every page

- Do not use any of the following special characters in title text: ‘”{}[]()

3. Page URL: Domain name, sub-domain, folder name and file name

Yahoo and Bing place specially high importance on the page URL compared to Google. Try search hotels in dublin in Bing. Notice that 9 out of 10 results on the first page have the words hotel and dublin in the URL, while the only other one has the word dublin even though it does not contain the word hotel. Try the same search for hotels in dublin in Google. Notice now there are 7 results with the word “hotel” and “dublin” in URL, one result with the word “hotel”, while the other two does not have any of the word “hotel” or “dublin” in the URL.

Domain name is not something you can choose over and over or create one for each keyword, so if you have not started your site yet, think and choose a domain name that is most appropriate for your niche. That should be for your most important keyword/key phrase. If you have started the website and the domain name isn’t that ideal, then be it. You’ll be more than make up for it if you follow these search engine optimization tips.

Sub-domains and folder names are most appropriate for sub-category within your niche.

File name will the most specific keyword for each page, it should be somewhere along the page title. I would recommend slight variation from the page title to get the maximum result.

For example, if your website is about hotel, and one of your target market is hotels in dublin, the ideal URL would be dublin(dot)hotel(dot)com/compare.html for comparison between dublin hotels and dublin(dot)hotel(dot)com/information.html for information about dublin hotels. Of course, most of such domain names has been taken long ago, so you got to use some creativity in choosing a good domain name.

There are arguments on which one is more important between sub-domain and folder. I say, it is up to you. These are mere tools, you can choose to use either sub-domain or folder name. Or you can choose using both of them. Remember though, try to keep the URL as short as possible. Search engines loves short URL.

4. Link back and Link out

Link-back remains one of the most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. Some webmasters swears by “If content is king, then link-back is the queen”. Link-back, or sometimes called inbound link, means the hyperlinks from other websites to our sites. Natural links from other sites (when they link to us in their article) without any reciprocal link (us linking back to them in return) remains the best valued link back.

Other methods like web directory submission or link exchange is still useful, even though it is having much less influence on Google. Bing is less stringent compared to Google for what constitute as valid link-back, so every link back to your site counts. However, remember that while it is easier for you to accumulate link-back, so are your competitors.

The most valuable links are not those link to your homepage, but linking to specific internal pages. That is called deep-linking.

Aside from link-back to your website, link-out (also called outbound links) to reputable sources is also a good way to improve your site ranking. Do a research and be careful of who you link to. You do not want to link to websites frowned upon by search engines. For example search for “site:cheatad.com” in Google, Yahoo and Bing. You’ll see there are pages indexed in all 3 search engines. If you see that a specific website does not have any page indexed, steer clear of them. Either those are new websites (which do not have much reputation point to pass anyway) or bad websites.

5. Use Bing Webmaster Center

Following Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer path, Bing have Webmaster Center for webmasters to manage and review their website and Search Engine Optimization effectiveness. In the Webmaster Center, you can submit your website and sitemap, diagnose crawling issues, as well as review back-links and outbound links.

6. Meta tags: Meta Description and Meta Keywords

By now, these are considered ancient techniques already. Do not bother too much with those, unless you have extra spare times.

Well, try the simple techniques above and your website will get much ahead in a very short time.