We can go all over this again and say it out loud, “there are many different ways to obtain traffic”. The only thing we should all know is that you need to make sure you are exploring all of them. Relying solely on specific search engines for example, can be a recipe for disaster as they constantly change or update their algorithms to couple with changing trends, quality requirements, and so on. I’m sure you have seen people saying that my rankings dropped because of this and because of that. Needless to say that, the more diverse you apply your SEO efforts, the less risk you are exposed of not being found.
Take article marketing for example. It is a good promotional technique and often times it is forgotten that articles you submit on high page rank article directories should also be promoted by making them powerful with backlinks too. This is just proof that doing something and leaving it alone, waiting for miracles to happen, simply does not work.
This is also true for search engine optimization. While I understand why many people would prefer only optimizing for Google, it should be noted that Bing is also a growing important search engine and one should not neglect what possibilities optimizing for Bing can offer. Just think about having 100% of nothing versus 10% of something. What I mean by this is that it is obviously great to rank on Google’s front page (not easy) for certain keywords or keyphrases, but would it not be nice if you also had the same rankings on Bing? Of course.
Earlier, I have posted about using Bing’s webmaster tools as part of your SEO campaign. Microsoft has gotten a long way since then and has provided many “free” SEO tools that you might still not be aware of. Two such tools are the AdIntelligence Keyword Tool and the Bing SEO Toolkit. The third in Bing’s arsenal is obviously the Bing Webmaster Tools.
Welcome to the new Bing Webmaster Tools
Revamped, or better yet, a complete re-haul of Bing’s webmaster tools has recently been deployed. The site has been completely redesigned to be easier to use, and has an intuitive design that focuses on three main areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as the Index Explorer, charting functionality, etc., now provides a more comprehensive view into how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Similar to that of Google’s webmaster tools, you can now see some interesting stats such as queries, clicks, impressions, and CTR.
While there is still a long way to go, it is clear that Bing is committed to further enhance their presence on the search engine arena as proven with the recent announcement from their search alliance with Yahoo (see below).
Organic search update and tips
A key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search listings (those found on the main body of the page). Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September time frame.
As Bing Webmaster Tools continues to add new features, it is always a good idea to get your site submitted and analyzing how Bing reads your data. Nothing to loose and (maybe) a lot to gain. Recent “buzz” on the sphere indicated that the top SEO ranking factors for Google and Bing are different and it is important to note that none of them compete. In theory getting top rankings for Bing and Google will not compromise each other.
How about you? Have you already submitted your site to Bing’s webmaster tools or are you still neglecting the potential for ranking well on Bing? Just do it, its easy and is worth your while, considering the benefit it could bring.
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The Awkward Truth About Search Engine Optimization
Hesham
RT @ditesco: Bing #SEO And Webmaster Tools http://bit.ly/cDfGwD
WP Content Plugins
Bing is also a very useful search engine. Thanks for leting us know about the importance of Bing. I will try to optimize my blogs for bing search engine.
Himanshu
hey thanks for the post. i can’t afford to miss traffic from bing.
Dick
Thanks Francisco I have a tendency to focus too much on Google and to rely on their search results being the only ones that matter. But Bing is here to stay I think and does have a following so I will be submitting my sites there, thanks again!
Hi Dick. Always good to see you here. Submitting your site to Bing’s webmasters tools is the first step and after enough data has been complied for your site, then you can start to tweak it more for optimum rankings for Bing’s Decision Engine 🙂
Guille
Google is the number one traffic generator for me, but I do occasionally see some people coming from Bing and Yahoo.
Your article brings up an excellent point, now if I could only improve my rankings within Bing and Yahoo.
Great article, I will check out Bing webmaster tools.
Hi Guille. Thanks for leaving your comment. If you want to rank well for Bing, I suggest you get started by submitting your site to their webmaster tools area to analyze the type of data they can give you. Once you have enough data, then you can see which ones are working well and optimize them further. Also, Bing’s blog (accessible via webmaster tools) is a suggested read. they porvide tons of information on how to get better rankings. Good luck
Guille
Wow, thanks DiTesco, I just logged on for the first time to Bing Webmaster tools the other day after reading your article, now I will check their blog as you suggest.
Thanks for this great info!
John Sullivan
RT @ditesco: Bing SEO And Webmaster Tools http://bit.ly/cDfGwD
Without question, you should pay attention to Bing. I’m glad that Microsoft is starting to get their search strategy inline. If you win over the webmasters, others will fall in line.
Hi Donnie. No doubt, if you win the webmasters, others will definitely fall in line. I have started to pay attention to Bing since they have launched the webmaster tools some year ago and I have to admit that it paid off. In my opinion, whether or not Bing will succeed (which I am convinced that it will eventually play an important role is search), the earlier you get in, the better.
Kathy
Well I have to disagree with you on your point here. I do understand what you are talking about. But, we all have a limited amount of time we can spend marketing, promoting, blogging and building. Those efforts should be focused on the things that bring us the greatest return on investment. In my experience that almost always means focusing on Google. When they have nearly 70% of the market and number 2 has something like 14%, it should be quite clear.
I have had web pages that rank at the top of Bing for lucrative commercial keywords. Their conversion is excellent. In fact it is better than Google. Still even with that being the case, I get way more money form position ten in the Google SERP than from position 3 in Bing.
Excellent point Kathy and I agree with you about focusing your efforts on something that will provide the best ROI. I have no doubt in my mind that one should never neglect the dominant force in search and I believe that everyone is already doing that and I think they should continue to do so. But just like anything else, doing one thing may work for some and others won’t. If you are looking at strict “commercial keywords” I agree that Google is the best way to go. Nonetheless, the time one needs to optimize for Bing at this present moment is not really that time consuming and the starting point is just submitting your site to their webmaster tools. While their factors for ranking differ from that of Google, the work that someone does for Google also works for Bing, so in a way you are really not duplicating any efforts.
Joliber Mapiles
It’s been awhile since i last visited my bing webmaster tool.. seems that the interface has change a lot.. I’ll be submitting my websites there to try luck in bing search.. no much success at bing so far.. anyway how are you kababayan? Just wanna tell you that we’re relaunching news2buzz.com..
Hi Joliber. How are things doing on your end. Been a while since we last bumped into each other 🙂 Great news about relaunching news2buzz, let me know when it goes live and maybe we can relaunch our collaboration as well. Good to see you here and YES, submit your sites to Bing as it can only benefit you and it only takes a little of your time. Looking forward to seeing more from you here.
Joliber
It is now officially opened with an 81-19% ads impressions revenue share for adsense.. yes, it’s 81% for the contributor… you can check it out.. Hope to see you there again..
I have submitted my site to Bing but haven’t found any traffic from the same as it has been from Google. I am quite puzzled with this fact. Why Bing doesn’t send me even a single person ? Looks as if it hates my blog 🙁
Very rightly said, Both Google and Bing seem to be considering it all on different criteria. It is really hard to guess for me though. Btw, I will try checking out Bing webmaster tools. Hope it will help me out in understanding each and everything in a better way. Thanks for sharing this update 🙂
That’s odd that bing is not sending you any or few traffic. Although their criteria differ from each other there should be at the very least some traffic. Your blog is established and I see no reason why not. Maybe as you said, give it a look and see how Bing is handling your data. It might give you some idea on how to “tackle” things.
Tinh
There have been a lot of things added to Bing Webmaster Tools and I feel it similar to Google webmaster tools now. Thanks
Hi Tinh. Similar but still quite a long way to go. nonetheless, I like the fact that they are doing something about it and this recent enhancement has certainly proven that they are here to stay.
jennifer duncan
Well I am always ready to do new things although i am getting 99% traffic from google only 🙂 but still i would like to optimize for bing. I have never thought to go for bing or yahoo but now i like your suggestion that its good and also its not time consuming. where as a simple rule of thumb to optimize bing is that you just checkout the onpage and offpage of bing toppers when you search a popular keyword you will immediately know the algorithm of bing, like what we do in google 🙂
Hi Jennifer. It really is not time consuming at all and it is as easy as submitting any website to Google’s webmaster tools. The verification process is also done through a meta tag and in a few minutes you are good to go. I favor for knowing how “other” search engines view my site as it is always a wise strategy. Never know, small today, big tomorrow and when that happens, ooppppsss. Thanks for dropping by, appreciate it.
Gwen
I know you don’t mean to and I’m certain you are providing useful information. I’m sure I’ll be able to make sense of it someday. I just started doing any kind of internet anything, other than pay bills or make movie reservations. I’m just now learning a tiny bit about SEO and google and I realize I have so much more to learn. I’ll just keep reading and learning I guess. I know I’ve learned a tremendous amount in 3 months from people just like you sharing information. Thank you.
Hello Gwen. First, welcome. Second, I know that SEO can be a complicated issue specially for those who are not tech savvy or just in the beginning of their blogging journey. I know what I am saying because just like you, I’ve been there. Not one clue where to start and how to do whatever they call it 🙂 Thanks to a wondeful community out there, I slowly but surely got the hand for it and it is now my turn to return what I learned onto others. If you are interested here is a small reading material which can guide you on the process. It is free, specially made for beginners and written by Google themselves. Hope this helps (click on the link): SEO Basics And Starter Guide
Michele
You talking to me…lol. Ok, raising my hand, totally guilty of neglecting Bing…need to give it some luv. 😉
Great post as usual…it really does matter and you are right, it should be part of arsenal of SEO tactics.
What’s interesting is that I fall on the 2nd page of Google for my target keyword, but on Bing I’m on page 3. Goes to show you that don’t assume because you are doing well in Google that others will follow suit.
Anyway, thanks again for the great info…running over to Bing webmaster tools now. 😉
That doesn’t like you, neglecting what Bing has to offer 🙂 Anyway, the clock is ticking and pretty soon the search alliance between Bing and Yahoo will be complete. At that time, I am convinced that “early birds” will have a greater chance of ranking (at least for a while), before everybody rushes up and realize that they should have done it in the first place 😉
Patricia
Hi
I’ve come over here via Sire’s site. I am new to blogging and trying to learn as much as I can without getting information overload! I go to Bing for some things so interesting that you have done this article about them. I find techie stuff hard so just learning some more is a help before I dive in.
At the moment my blog gets more traffic from visitors from other sites and from yesterday the traffic spiked with ppl stumbling me. I don’t even know how that works yet but from my stats last night it sure does 🙂
The blogging community are very generous with their knowledge and their time. So many have helped me when I have not known something especially if it involves techie stuff. They visit my site, comment and encourage me.
When I am an established blogger, I hope to be able to help others the way others are now helping me.
Patricia Perth Australia
Hi Patricia. Thanks for dropping by and I am really glad Sire sent you over this way. He is a cool and wonderful blogger and has great tips to provide. As with your new ventures towards blogging, don’t worry too much about all the tech stuff. In time, and as you increase your knowledge, you will find that all you need is a little understanding about it and the good thing about technology and the blogging community is that they are there to make your digital life simpler. Take me, I am not really that tech savvy, learned along the way, but with a lot of ppl helping, you can’t get wrong 🙂
Terry@Robot Costume
Thank you for the post on Bing SEO. I have been trying to get my sites listed and indexed and have been fighting a losing battle. Now I know about the tools! Much appreciated.
Nabil
Your article is pretty general. My only tip to anyone reading this article is that one shouldn’t optimize their website for a specific search engine. Bing in this case.
Just keep adding content, and if optimizing for a search engine – choose Google. All the other search engines will follow along once you’ve got enough content and backlinks.
Hi Nabil. You are right, and I have never said that one should optimize for a “specific” search engine. That would be unwise. That said, I don’t agree to what you say that “you should choose” only Google. This seems to be contradictory and close to “putting” all the eggs in the same basket. I say optimize for all “major” search engines whenever possible. At the very least, tell other search engines “like bing” that you exists and that should be good to start.
Small Business Technology Solutions
Just stumbled upon this post. You make some very valid points in here about the potential importance of Bing, especially now that Yahoo search results are becoming Bing results. I didn’t know that they had their own version of webmaster tools, but I’ll be checking that out right away. Thanks!
Daniel Sharkov
Never thought of submitting to Bing’s webmaster tools. A matter of fact this is the first time I hear that such tools do exist. Although I believe that at the moment Bing is far from playing a significant role for a website’s traffic, submitting doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Thanks for the heads up!
Jarret
I’ve started a number of various blogs over the years. Though I’ve added all of the XML sitemaps to Bing / Yahoo / and Google webmaster, I only seem to get search traffic from Google.
For older blogs, maybe 10% or less of my search traffic is from Yahoo with only 1-3% from Bing. On newer blogs, I get virtually zero traffic from either Yahoo or especially Bing.
It takes forever to get pages indexed by Bing on new sites. I thought that Yahoo and Bing were now powered by Bing, yet I seem to have far more pages indexed by Yahoo, what’s the deal with that?
tracy ingram
I need to optimize for bing on a few of my sites. Is there a WP plug in to make this easier like google has?
TJ McDowell
For my major terms that I’m focusing on, I typically rank higher in Bing and Yahoo than Google. Even with ranking better for my keywords on Bing than Google, I still get more traffic from Google. It seems to me like Bing and Yahoo play more by SEO rules as far as where you rank. Thinking about it though, maybe some of the traffic I’m getting from Facebook is really Bing traffic. Do you know how searches inside of Facebook are reported in Analytics?
Hi Tj. That’s interesting because in my case, it is the other way around. I mean most of my targeted keywords rank better on Google than Bing and Yahoo. Although I have some that all rank pretty much the same. Traffic is way better from Google than the other two but they do send me traffic which is good.
As for how searches inside FB gets reported into Analytics, you got me there. Don’t know the response to that. Maybe I’ll research this a bit and see if I can come up with a “reliable” answer to your question. Can you take a rain check on that one? , lol
Stuart
I find Yahoo used to provide some worthwhile traffic and ranking to the top is a lot more simple to achieve than with Google, for example in Yahoo when the exact phrase is in a combination of the URL, Page Title, H1, H2, Description etc (all of the most basic of Google ranking factors) it seems very easy to slip in at the top, whilst if one of the above is not ‘exact’ to the targeted search phrase then you end up a mile from the top! Would you agree with this?
Alexander
You are right, sometimes you do forget the other SEs and just focus on google
Even though Google is the biggest traffic generator you still have to focus on the other search engines like Bing, all traffic is good traffic right? 🙂
Great post by the way
Sebastian
I always focus on Google but you are right, maybe we all should put some more focus on Bing and other SE. There is a couple of percentage of traffic to get!