I often talk about the stiff competition that we face for some of the more coveted search terms in our industry, like dedicated servers, managed hosting, and web hosting. While anyone can spend hundreds of thousands (if not more) on paid links and ads, ranking organically for these terms is significantly more profitable – more targeted traffic, higher click through rates, and these users are more likely to complete the desired ‘action’. With that in mind, it’s important for us to be up to date on the changes in the SEO industry, like the recent change to rel=nofollow.
With the release of Bing, I started looking for information on the differences in SEO for Bing vs. Google (and yes, even Yahoo!). WebProNews had an article that talked about SEO for Bing, Twitter, and Facebook. Among other things, it mentions how Facebook makes a good deal of the web invisible to search, how Twitter, being a real time source of information, means there’s more pressure to be timely with your posts, and Bing, with their related category searches, offers specific segments or longer-tail search terms that can be factored in to SEO efforts.
Another article I found gave specific points on how SEO for Bing is different. From that post:
Domain Age: Bing is a lot harsher about domain age than Google. The longer your domain has been registered, the more favor it will find with Bing. One may consider acquiring older domains to enhance the chances of being picked up by Bing.
Length of Text: For Bing, size does matter. So, ensure that your webpages have content of at least 300 words. The length of the text is more of a significant factor for Bing than it is for Google.
Link Out: Google alters your page rank based on the relevance of the link out webpages. Often, people are unsure of how a particular link out would impact their webpage and steer clear of this option. However, Bing likes link outs and increases the page ranking of those webpages that have more of them.
Title Tag of your Page: The title tag is of utmost importance for Bing. Without the relevant keyword in this area, your complete SEO efforts could be wasted.
By having a clear idea of your target users and how results will appear in the search engines, you can design and develop pages that will rank better and increase your ROI.