The Maine SEO Blog

Google is still king, but Microsoft’s Bing has been getting a lot of press (I do enjoy the Bing! noise). So while I will forever optimize for Google first, it’s important to understand what other search engines care about.

For the most part, Bing follows the trends of other search engines: title tags, headers, meta-descriptions, and links (both incoming and intra-site) are all important. There are, however, some differences that Bing appears to hold near and dear; and here’s what you can do to accommodate the newest search engine…

1. Get the Bing Toolbox

Like Google’s Webmaster Tools, the Bing Toolbox is a great way to discover errors more quickly. It also has a unique set of interesting data for your statistical pleasure, including backlinks and outbound links, crawl dates, and a keyword tool to show how well your site is optimized for them. You can also submit your site to Bing through the Toolbox.

2. Focus on your URLs

Bing is especially aware of keywords in domains and URLs. Just take a look at the screen shot below. A search for “Maine SEO” lands this blog in the first two spots!

As I’ve talked about before, Google puts little, if any, weight on keyword rich domains or URLs. Established URLs are the name of the game for Google, but it seems that if you want to rank well at Bing, you’d best get yourself some keyword rich URLs.

3. Rely on exact match

Similarly, Bing focuses on exact match keywords. While Google is of the school of related match, you’d best know which keywords your customers are searching for. Obviously this has both benefits and downfalls.

4. Age matters

Unfortunately for bloggers and new sites, it seems that Bing is focused on older sites that have built reputation with age. Not a whole lot you can do here other than sit around and wait. It does cause you to think twice before creating a new domain, rather than sticking with an established one (hint: always pick the latter).

5. Think about anchor text before quantity…or quality

Anchor text is important to all search engines, but evidently with Bing it’s even more important than the quality or quantity of backlinks. Most likely, this is the reasoning behind #3 and coincidentally #2, as more often than not, sites will link using the same keywords used in the domain/URL.

See how the two compare for the same “maine seo” query:

Nicki Hicks
All search engines were not created equal

I admit it, I’ve been positively ignorant of the fact that there’s another search engine out there willing to trifle with the power of Google; you’ll have to excuse my hesitation, it’s just that we’ve seen it before.

I put it out to the people, and here’s what I got:

What people like

• “I love the Travel Search feature Bing has.  It has a cool Price Predictor which tells you whether to buy now or wait for a better price. Imports prices from all over ” – @ccmaine
• “Love how Bing lists its videos.” – @sarah_wallace
• “I’ve had really good luck with it when search for something in the form of a question or multiple word descriptions.” – @MeRAbiz

What people don’t like

• “Nothing special (I’m kind of partial to Google though)” – @musicsGF
• “Like Chrome, adequate, but no compelling reason to switch” – @JMunk
• “I don’t think the search itself offers much new; some of the media type searches (images, for example) are good alternatives” – @justinrussell
• “Like the Cashback and Live ID integration…not a huge fan of the results or auto-suggestions really” – Justin Cox
• “To be honest I haven’t even compared it’s functionality to ever awesome Google, I’m too distracted by the pretty background pictures!” – @kwallace2

There you have it, folks. There are of course the negative reviews and (somewhat) positive ones. But what it really comes down to is…what do you like the best? It looks like that Google is still king.

Nicki Hicks
I guess I can’t complain I rank #1 on bing

It’s funny how something like a flu strain can cause such a ruckus in search.

Google Search

Google Insights for search gives some really helpful data – including the recent trends in the “flu” category. Below the graph, you’ll find “rising searches”, which is great for brainstorming hot keywords for copy or blogging.

Twitter

Twitter search gives real time hot topics – whether it’s an epidemic or hashtag glorification.

Facebook

Facebook groups and fan clubs are the perfect spot to find out what’s hot now.

YouTube

You don’t have to go searching far for that latest videos and newscasts on the swine flu from YouTube.

iPhone

Even iPhone apps are getting a new addition via IntuApps.

Nicki Hicks
The bacon phenomenon has finally caught up with us

Google loves well-aged sites.  Yahoo loves meta-keywords. Live loves fresh content.  And who really cares what Ask likes.  (Just kidding…but seriously, who cares.)

With so many differences between the major engines, subtle though they may be, is it really possible to optimize for every one of them?  To push matters further, is it even worth trying to optimize for them all?  With Google taking the cake on search engine market share, is it worth worrying about the under dogs?

Take a look at the (major) differences…

Only Major Issues of Optimizing for Everything

1. Generally, Google does not like meta-keywords; Yahoo does.  There’s always been speculation as to whether Google finds meta-keywords spammy; perhaps a healthy balance could work here – something to test out!
2. Using robots.txt vs. robots-nocontent, depending on who you want to optimize for.

Is it even worth optimizing for anything other than Google?

For the most part, I tend to focus entirely on Google. I check for indexed pages for a new site there first.  I check PageRank before WebRank.  I use nofollows and robots.txt, not robots-nocontent.

Maybe I’m just partial to Google; then again, isn’t everyone?

Nicki Hicks
Equal Opportunity SEO

Until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sold on the fact that sitemaps were beneficial.  I was under the impression that it was sort of a moot point: neither good nor bad.  After seeing a post on the SEOmoz blog asking if sitemaps affect crawlers, I was sold.

I installed the WordPress plugin for XML Sitemaps on this blog on Thursday, January 29.  These are the crawl stats from my Webmaster Tools account from that day:

Checking again today, one week later, I’ve been waiting out the crawlers on purpose – making no posts until yesterday, and this is what my stats look like now.

Notice the jump.  Yesterday’s post is included in this crawl – as the site was cached yesterday.  I’ve noticed that the blog will usually be cached a day or two after a post, so could it be crawled so soon because of the sitemap? Perhaps, and it’s definitely something to keep an eye on!

Nicki Hicks
Flirting with SE bots with Sitemaps