As search marketing experts, we regularly sit with clients to discuss their SEO campaigns, and without exception (and quite rightly) all clients want to get their website to number one on Google. But what about the other search engines, and should you still be considering them when putting together your SEO strategy? Google is still the predominant website player with in excess of 80% of all traffic, but Bing and Yahoo are still to be taken seriously. And any serious SEO campaign should include all three of the top Search Engines.
Google has by far and away the most complex algorithms, which means that best practice for Google will mean that your site will naturally perform well in the other two. However, Bing (Microsoft’s response to Google) needs to be considered slightly differently, it is gaining ground on Google, by applying approaching live search slightly differently to Google. Our SEO experts have been watching it’s development and we’ve listed the main factors that Bing considers important in ranking on it.
Content – the old adage ‘Content is King’ again, but the big difference between Google and Bing is that Bing doesn’t worry about the frequency of updating of the content. So sites that are less maintained still perform consistently well on Bing - which is great news for an SEO campaign as it means that once you have achieved great results on Bing you can re-focus efforts on Google and other more demanding search engines, allowing your SEO time to go further.
Age – the age of the website has greater weight on Bing as opposed to just the domain name age, it is one of Bings most important criteria. Although you can do nothing about this in your SEO campaign, it is worth bearing in mind.
Domain names and keywords – whilst keywords in domain names wan in and out of popularity with Google, Bing rates a domain name with the keyword in it as highly important. Bing also seems to be less ‘fussy’ than the other search engines on keyword density – ie the more keywords in the copy the better for Bing - but we would still advise avoiding 'stuffing' in your SEO copy writing, as you should always bear in mind the an the relevance of the copy to them.
Architecture – Bing prefers simple, flat architecture, - so simpler sites with three clicks or less will always do well in Bing. More complex sites with deeper architecture will have to undoubtedly work harder on Bing.
So if you are about to undertake SEO optimisation then don’t just focus solely on Google, largely Yahoo will follow in Google’s shadow – but Bing may just give you the edge over your competitors if you add it into the mix. But as with all things related to Search Engine Optimisation – things never stay static – so if you want the latest advise, give Prodo Digital a call and talk to our Search Marketing experts.