Don't Ignore Bing! Top 5 SEO Tips to Dominate

• We seem to be doing pretty well ranking-wise in Google, but surprisingly, not as well in Bing. Can you provide us some algorithmic insight into how Bing is ranking their content and provide some tips we can implement?

Answer: Earlier this year at SMX West in San Jose, CA, Bing Program Manager Rangan Majumder stated that Bing uses what he calls Ranker Magic to return results to its users. He then elaborated by saying that Bing's new "SEO formula" could be described as the following:

Rank = Authority + Quality of Keyword Match + Personal Preference + Social Preference

Basically, what the above states is that the returned rank for a result in Bing is now highly personalized to the point that NO two users should be seeing the same results. Ranking well in Bing is thus a combination of three unique aspects: geographic preference, on-page quality match, and social signals.

In fact, even more so than Google...

Bing is providing geo-focused results that are now more heavily influenced by a user's past search history AND social interactions than just link authority.

In other words, the highest ranking site in Bing may not always be the one with the best backlink profile. Instead, it very well could be the one that is either the closest to the user or which was most recently shared by their Facebook friends.

Nevertheless, to best position your sites in Bing for optimum rankings here are five important SEO optimization takeaways:

• 1. Optimize for Local Search: Make it clear what city AND state your pages are tailored for, especially if you are targeting a local audience. Add your address information and phone number predominantly on your pages directly, not within an image file. Make sure as well to claim your business listing in Bing and fully enhance your local business profile.
  
  
• 2. Get Social: Make sure that you have installed on-page Facebook Like, Twitter, and Google Plus social media sharing buttons to generate on-page social proof. Consider the AddThis plug-in for fast, easy implementation. Social-driven content (especially content shared and marketed on Facebook) does very well organically in Bing. Make sure you are leveraging your personal and business Facebook accounts to push out your site content.
  
  
• 3. On-Page SEO is Big: Bing loves the Title Tag! It may be the single-biggest on-page SEO metric for them. Make sure you've referenced your most important keyword phrase EXACTLY within your Title Tag. Then, seek out external links from pages which have your target keyword within their Title Tags. Follow our Unfair Advantage Guide to Winning the SE Wars recommendation when optimizing the rest of your page content.
  
  
• 4. Domain Age is King! Bing loves old sites. If you have a nicely-aged domain, you are already getting a boost in Bing. This metric is so noticeable in Bing that we've actually had clients successfully convert their current sites to OLDER domains and get huge gains simply on the basis of this single SEO metric.
  
  
• 5. Get a Blog: Bing continually reinforces their rankings based on data freshness. We have witnessed results for queries change dozens of times a day based on real-time blog posts and late-breaking news. Similar to Google's Freshness Update from last November, Bing seems to have a better grip on this when comparing the two. Recommendation: Get a blog so you can easily add content and get it indexed faster.
  
  
• BONUS TIP Get an Inclusive Domain: Bing tends to rank exact match and keyword-inclusive domains HIGHER, on average, than Google. This also extends to interior page titles. If you are optimizing your page for "blue widgets," you need to be naming that page "blue-widets.htm," as an example. As we covered previously, Google Penguin has downgraded exact match domains already. This has only increased Bing's lead in that metric.

It's extremely common for both client and SEO alike to ignore Bing when it comes to optimizing a site. That's a mistake. Bing (along with Yahoo) still accounts for a healthy 29% of monthly search traffic referrals here in the US (as of April, 2012). If you find yourself struggling with Bing rankings consider a site audit with special attention to the above recommendations. Good luck!