SEO For Bing

by Tim Grice – Original post is here.

Just a quick one today following on from my look at how Bing could be ranking sites yesterday.

I have had comments here on the blog, on twitter and even by email looking for a little more proof that Bing is putting their main emphasis on domain age and target anchor percentage. For anyone who missed the post yesterday, target anchor percentage means the percentage of backlinks that are anchored with your target keyword.

Today I wanted to back up the evidence from yesterday with some more lovely figures I decided to use linkscape and the SEOmoz tool set to take an indepth look at the keyword “make money”. I chose this one due to the competition and the fact that most sites targeting this phrase are heavily optimised.

Below are the results and again I have circled the areas “I” think Bing are putting the most emphasis on for ranking purposes.

The two sites are:

Experienced People – Number 1 on Google for “make money”.

Making Online Money – Number 1 on Bing

Some Points To Note

1 – As you can see from the above table the Google site is far better optimised on page, more quality backlinks, more target anchor links and a far superior PageRank. This makes it easy to understand why Google ranks it so high but why does Bing not?

The only thing I can put this down to is the fact that the Bing Site has a more focused link profile in that it has a higher percentage of anchored backlinks. It also is an older domain slightly, on every test I have done the domains have always been older than those on Google.

2 – Bing are obviously not taking the amount and quality of backlinks or PageRank into consideration or their top “make money” site would not stand a chance. PageRank 2??

3 – Something I picked up on from both sites was that very little link juice passed through their target anchor links. This says to me that you don’t need your anchored links to be high quality in order to pass on relevance.

4 – In order to rank higher on Google you need to view SEO as a total package leaving no area under optimised. If you want top results on Google ,who have around 80% traffic share, you need to be systematically implementing SEO on and off page.

In my opinion from the evidence I have collected, Bing are putting a strong focus on domain age and target anchor link percentage. It won’t allow many spammers to get good rankings for competitive keywords but what it will do is create a lack of freshness among their results, something Google accomplish with ease.

Thanks

Tim- Original post is here.

by Tim Grice – Original post is here

Well I am sure were all just about sick and tired of hearing about Bing? Have we all given it a whirl already?

Despite the widespread attention I though I would do a post on it anyway but as always from a 100% SEO point of view. What I really want to do with this post is look at what makes a site rank No.1 on Bing in comparison to Google? What SEO techniques are going to get you exposure on Bing that won’t necessarily do the same for you on Google.

In true SEO Wizz style I picked a keyword and took a look at the top ranking sites on Bing and Google.

“seo services” was the keyword, I figured we may as well keep it relevant plus this is a highly competitive keyword, with a top ppc price of £3.77, not overly high but competitive enough for our purposes.

Ok well we put together the following figues, take a look over them we’ll try to explore them a little.

The two sites I looked at are as follows:-

Whitehatmedia – ranked 1 on Bing

and

Smart Traffic – ranked 1 on google

Right let’s break this down a little.

On Page Factors

The Google site is slightly better optimised on page but in my opinion the differences are not enough to suggest anything major. Maybe Google takes into accounut on page optimisation more than the new bing search engine.

Every time I do these comparisons the top Google sites always seem to implement the meta keywords, yet they don’t use them to determine rankings anymore, right? I’d keep using them anyway, what’s the harm.

Off Page Factors

This is where we see clear differences between the 2 sites.

The Google No.1 has a massive link popularity and a better link diversity. The Google site even enjoys a more focused anchor distribution.

It’s nice to see the younger domain doing better on Google, half the age of the site on Bing

Linking Pages

The pages that link to a site have always played a major role when ranking for keywords. On Google the idea is that you should acquire links from pages that are as relevant as possible.

This part of the table shows that the Google site has a higher percentage of links from pages with the keyword in the body, however the bing site has more links from pages with the keyword in the title tag. Is this the key to better Bing rankings?? Could be.

Looking down the table it is quite clear to see what Google focuses on and why sites rank higher on Google. Link popularity, diversity, anchor distribution. On the other hand it is quite interesting to note that the site with the higher PageRank does better on Bing.

So top tips from SEO Wizz…..

If you want to rank higher on Bing:-

• Make your domain age increase
• Try to acquire links from pages with your keywords in the title tag

To be fair both of these tips would help your Google campaign but it seems that more emphasis is put on these factors by Bing.

Another thing I noticed was that both sites have implemented heavy article marketing, so keep writing and distributing that keyword focused content, it works.

More research needed for it to be conclusive.

Thanks

Tim

Written by Jeffrey Smith at SEO Design Solutions – Original Post Is Here.

In case you haven’t noticed, search results have been in a state of flux for the past week for competitive keywords in Google. For many SEO’s its back to the drawing board as SEO results are being challenged by personalization, GEO targeting and unexpected anomalies as Google essentially split tests the SERP (search engine result pages) with new a unique weighting algorithm. Could the recent update be due to Google shoring up relevance due to the introduction of Microsoft’s new search engine  Bing? or is it just another shift for the better? (after the search results settle).

Google, Bing and SEO…

It is inevitable that (eventually) all that we know will change, yet,  is the SEO industry ready to embrace the fact that dated axioms may fall flat (along with the search results they support) in the face of domain authority or other unknown or recently introduced metrics? This is nothing new for SEO, as staying ahead of shifts in relevance are crucial to remain visible in the search engine result pages.

Typical benchmarks used for enhancing search engine position were:

• Term Frequency
• Peer Review (off page popularity)
• User Engagement Time
• Bounce rate / user satisfaction rate
• Co-occurrence (theme density)
• Domain Age
• Page Load Time
• Post Frequency (for new content).
• Internal linking

Yet, who knows (aside from Google) which new metrics are being introduced or weighted to reflect how search engine result pages are restructured. With relevance as the mantra and fickle surfers abroad, many business owners are looking at  Bing as an SEO alternative for increasing organic search engine traffic.

Although Bing is “a breath of fresh air”, many surfers remain loyal to Google for stability and consistent relevant results. Not that we can complain as our website is #3 for SEO in Bing along with other notable trophy top 10 rankings such as #1 for SEO consulting, #2 for search engine optimization services and in the top 10 for search engine optimization company, but we know that for now, Google traffic is crucial for most businesses online, especially if you rank in the top 10 results for your primary keywords and key phrases such as we do for the keyword “SEO”.

There is nothing like a shift in Google’s search algorithm to make CEO’s businesses (both large and small alike) stand up and pay attention to the metrics of who, what, where when and how, and how their online ROI and traffic are affected.

Those who depend on a new stream of visitors as a result of organic rankings know there is nothing like editorial rankings from natural search results. Particularly when you can enhance them systematically as a result of structuring fresh content, building internal links and attracting links from a variety of sources.

Nothing like reinforcing the PPC model with a ripple of change, but what happens if SEO types spend too much time focusing on rankings and not enough time focusing on conversions? Traffic is nice, but conversion pays the bills.

Similarly, with the dependency model shifting less from search engines to people finding and sharing resources with social media such as Twitter, Google and other search engines need to stay ahead of the curve to keep their percentage of market/attention share healthy and rooted with firm results.

The motto of “just in case” has never had more emphasis than today. It’s not what search behavior exists at present that matters so much as it is about creating a robust site with multiple topical appendages so that anyone searching for products or services in your niche, should find a relevant landing page supported by educational, editorial or engaging content to satisfy the needs of various type of traffic.

The bottom line is, change is inevitable and your competitors are not just going to just “go away” and let your landing pages rise to the top of search results unchecked. With the competitive landscape always under the watchful eye of those who would exploit it, search engines must adapt and weed out any attempts to inflate relevance by automation or unethical means.

Unfortunately, that means that many who held top rankings for various competitive keywords may see rankings take a dip as new algorithms are ushered in to assess and reevaluate the supporting metrics responsible for distancing them from their competition. Danny Sullivan chief editor and founder of Search Engine Land discusses in great detail many of the changes that are currently rippling throughout the Google algorithm. One in particular is the Google losing backward compatibility on the use of page rank sculpting and the use of the no-follow tag.

With one perspective it is leveling the playing field and giving way to other websites which may or may not be more relevant, but like all things you have to test, test and retest the relevance model to ensure that in the end quality is resolute.

Written by Jeffrey Smith at SEO Design Solutions – Original Post Is Here.