Tips for Bing Search Engine Optimization

The recent announcement of the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership indicates that Microsoft will soon have a search marketshare between 20% and 30% by the time the integration is complete in 2011. Bing's approach to parsing queries and presenting results is different than Google. Here are some of the things to stress for performing well on Bing.

Title Tags

Similar to Google, <title></title> is used for the entry title on the search engine results pages. Titles need to be relevant, concise, unique and compelling.

Meta Tags

Bing is making more use of <meta name="description"> than Google. Given the increased visibility of this text in the results page, web site publishers have more control over the presentation of their organization's value proposition. Use this blurb of text carefully.

Site Links

Site Links are the 4-8 links which appear for some sites. particularly when the search phrase is their brand name. These are automatically extracted from the text of links on the site, primarily the global navigation headers. Be sure these text links are descriptive keyword rich. Avoid phrases in the global navigation like "Click Here" or "More Information". There are no options for adding or removing these links, so you are stuck with whatever the algorithm picks.

Quick Preview

A rollover on the individual entries in the SERP provides access to a popup of extended information taken from the page.

Image and Video Search

Visual and A/V media are continuing to gain in popularity. Overall, Bing is much more focused on visual information than its competitors.

Shopping

User reviews, taken from sources such as Citysearch and Yelp are augmenting results pages.

Local Search

Get listed in Bing Maps by adding an entry to the Listing Center. Check current listings for accuracy. Fill in as many fields of data as possible to further categorize and qualify your listings.

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