Bing and Yahoo Optimization Tips

I should apologize in advance because the title is a little bit misleading since Bing now powers the Yahoo search results so by optimizing for Bing, you automatically optimize for Yahoo.

Bing is Microsoft's 3rd attempt at building a search engine that could compete with Google. First they had MSN, then Live and now Bing. Looking at my Analytics logs which show that from the last 10,000+ visitors over 90% came from Google, I'd say that Bing is making as much inroads as MSN and Live.

Nevertheless, Bing still has hundreds of millions of searches every month so here are four tips for boosting your Bing rankings:

On-page Optimization is Important

Bing specifically says that your website should use completely valid code (run it through a code validator), employ correct redirects, have no broken links and used static pages where ever possible – which means you are going to need to rewrite those URLs if you are using a dynamically generated site. Bing also gives preference to title and H1 tags, so make sure you use them in your site!

Quality and Relevant Backlinks

Relevant is the keyword here. Bing apparently tries to determine the topic of a website by picking up topic specific keywords. Links to your site from other similar sites seems to play an important factor here.

Bing Webmaster Center

Just like Google, Bing has its own Webmaster Center where you can submit your site and Bing will tell you any problems that its robot encounters. This can be anything from large file sizes (Bing likes small files) to broken links. You can also find out the sites Bing has found linking to you and the sites you are linking too – check these to see if you are getting quality topic specific links to your site!

Content

They've always said content is king and Bing seems to like all kinds of content, especially videos, Flash and text. If you are going for a text based website, ensure your content is at least 300+ words long and focused around a single topic, the Bing webmaster guidelines state that they don't like it if you talk about a variety of topics – which is bad news for the front page of a personal blog!

Domain Age

Search engines like to try and establish authority and one way to do this is to consider the domain age. A domain and website that has been around for many years is apparently more valuable and trustworthy to Bing than a new site on a new domain, so time to fire up the GoDaddy expiring domains list!

In the end, optimizing for Bing is not that much different to Google, so optimizing for one should help you out in the other since neither asks you to do something which conflicts with the advice of the other.