Lord of the Bing

One Bing to rule them all, one Bing to bind them, one Bing to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Rally the troops and gather the weapons, Microsoft is planning yet another attack on Middle Earth. With the news that Yahoo will begin using Bing as its search engine, Search Engine Optimizers around the world are struggling to figure out exactly what this will mean for them. From our analysis, we think the answer to this is “very little” and at the same time, “quite a lot”.

In the realm of “Very Little”, content will remain key but its emphasis will diminish slightly now that Bing is powering the results.

Why? Our studies have shown that traditionally Yahoo has placed more emphasis on content and less emphasis (as compared to Google and MSN/Bing) on links. So, building quality inbound links will continue to be critical and we don’t see any of those recommendations changing.

As for content, both Google and Yahoo look at Title, H1, Meta Description, keyword density and many other on-page factors. We recommend a continued focus optimizing for those on-page factors (with the normal caution to follow the standard rules of unique tags and avoid any keyword stuffing).

Neither of these points will change with the Bing-Yahoo agreement. It is for these reasons that we believe general SEO tactics will not change drastically. But that’s not to say there won’t be change.

While in the dominion of, “Quite A Lot” …

Microsoft is trying to challenge Google in the search market and with one fell swoop they’ve gained 28% of it. So what happens when the search market has less competition? We believe that standardization of SEO practices across the engines will be severely hindered. When there were 3 search engines, adoption of a standard practice by one of the search engines would quickly prompt the others to follow suit. We think this new search landscape will mean less standardization across the engines which will create additional work and headaches for SEO practioners and Web Developers.

Getting pages indexed by Yahoo has always seemed easier than getting them indexed by Bing. We are of the opinion that Slurp indexes pages a bit better and a bit more than Bing. Some SEO practitioners have even reported analysis showing Slurp indexing 40 times the amount Bing does. Unless there is some marriage between Slurp and the Bing Bot, getting sites indexed in Bing will become more difficult.

This means robust site architecture, sitemaps and clear navigation will become critical to getting indexed in Bing. Expect to spend more time getting your new pages and in many cases, your legacy pages indexed by the Microsoft Orcs a.k.a Bing Bot.

Things to think about and prepare yourself for…

Will Yahoo turn off Slurp? More importantly, will we lose our access to Yahoo Site Explorer? (If we do) We can still use Google Webmaster Tools for inbound link information regarding our own site, but where will we go for competitive link information? We predict a shift in how this type of analysis is done and perhaps a change in how it manifests itself as we lose access to Site Explorer and have to look elsewhere for reliable inbound linking information.

Most of the tools we’ve seen and used look to Site Explorer for their inbound linking information, so if and when Yahoo gets rid of Site Explorer there should be some changes to many of the inbound link analysis tools.

With all these questions, theories and possible conclusions around Bing merging with Yahoo, these are the key elements that we agree on when it comes to marketing for search engines:

1. Google still captures approximately 65% of search traffic, so your first objective is to meet Google’s SEO standards; by meeting Google you will by default meet a majority of Bing’s.
2. Bing requires your title tag to be 5 – 65 characters long. Description tag to be 25 – 150 characters in length and your individual keyword tag 825 characters in total with commas separating.
3. Links are key across the board and should be an integral part of any SEO campaign. Remember, this is not something you want to try and add six months down the road. You should focus on building quality, ethical links right from the start.
4. Your content needs to include the primary key phrase 2 – 3 times within the page. Disperse these phrases across the top, middle and bottom paragraphs. Don’t forget those all-important supportive phrases to reinforce the focus of each keyword and help create a more robust user friendly page.
5. URL structuring is an important element to Bing so make sure you incorporate your key phrases into both your root directory and sub-folders.

In conclusion, middle earth is still up for grabs. Though the web universe has been at peace with Google and the two others for some time, Bing will begin to force us to optimize to its growing engine. Be prepared to alter your SEO methods, do your due diligence for your link building tactics and remember that similar to Apple and Microsoft; Firefox and Microsoft; thus we will be meeting separate standards for both Google and Microsoft.

Long live the best search engine results.

Bookmark this post: