Is Google Losing Favour With Audiences? Perhaps It’s Time to Optimise Your Website for Bing

For many years Google has been the one search engine that businesses focused on. However, there are signs that the tide is changing and consumers are choosing to use other search engines instead. In the UK, Google still manages to catch the majority of the market. However, Bing and Yahoo enjoy a combined market share of 13%. in the US, it accounts for 19.4%. Bing’s share of the US market actually increased by 0.2% in 2016, while Google’s dropped by the same amount. There are a number of factors that could have contributed to the increase. For example, Windows 10 has Bing search integrated into its software. Whatever the reasons, Bing, and its partner in crime Yahoo, really doesn’t deserve to be overlooked. Especially now that Mozilla Firefox has announced it is ditching Google in favour of Yahoo.

So what can you do to ensure your website gets ranked by Bing? You’ll be pleased to learn that many of the factors are similar to Google. That means you still need to concentrate your efforts on content and links.

Is Google Losing Favour With Audiences

Quality Content
Quality counts is what they say and this is true for Bing, as well as Google. Pages should be unique and written for the humans reading them, rather than the bots scanning them. The three pillars of quality content are authority, utility and presentation. In other words, can the content be trusted. Is it well written, useful and detailed? Will readers have no problem finding the information they want?

Backlinks
These are still beneficial if you want your site to be optimised. Links add an air of trustworthiness to your site. Black hat links are a big no no.

Aside from these two important factors, there are a number of others to bear in mind, if you want to be ranked on Bing.

Top Ways to Optimise Your Site for Bing

Register Your Business and Website
The first step is to claim your business, much the same as you would with Google. The process is simple and just requires that you visit Bing Places for Business. You should be able to either create your business or claim ownership of one that’s already listed. The next step is to register your website. Again, this is much the same process as with Google, and involves indexing your site. The process is a little more complex but is clearly explained if you make use of Bing’s Webmaster Tools.

Create Tags and Categories
To help your content become more visible, you’ll need to create tags and categories. If you’ve used something like WordPress to create your site, this will be done for you. What do the tags do? They are labels that provide information for human readers as well as the bots. Much the same as a title or header, they give an idea of what you can expect from a post. Relevant keywords should be used in titles tags for all pages of your site.

Use the Right Keywords
Once upon a time, keywords were the be all and end all when it came to SEO optimisation. Things have moved on since then, but keywords do still have an important part to play. These keywords have to be relevant and used in the right context.

Social Networking
if you haven’t got enough time to social network, then try and employ someone who can help. Various social media accounts should be linked to your website. For example, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and of course, Facebook.

Steer Clear of Black Hat Services
We’d be lying if we said that black hat techniques don’t work, because they actually do. However, they go completely against a search engines terms and conditions. Should you be caught using such techniques you risk your website being banned. What are black hat techniques? Things such as fake reviews and fake site, as well as keyword spamming.

Content Will Always be King
One of the best ways to attract organic search engine traffic is with good quality content. The ideal length for a blog, for example, is 1,600 words. The subject matter should also be researched well, include lots of good images and be from a reliable source.

The Age of Your Domain
Something that makes Bing a little different to Google is the emphasis it places on the age of a domain. It is able to prioritise older sites very well. Priority also seems to be given to domain names which are more official sounding. For example, .gov or .edu.

Technical Requirements
In total, there are six technical areas that Bing concentrates on when it comes to ranking. These include the load time for your site. Obviously, the quicker the better. The URLs from your website should be current. Any unnecessary ones need to be removed.

Things to Avoid

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Duplicating content
  • Social Media Schemes
  • Link Schemes
  • One webpage for Bing and another for visitors
  • Redirecting visitors to other content

There are in fact, very few differences between optimising for Google, Bing or Yahoo. The basics are pretty much the same. You should be aiming to build trust in your website and provide readers with pages that are full of useful information. It should be presented well and in detail. The aim of any content used is to connect with the readers, rather than satisfy the search engine’s needs.

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