While Google is considered the search engine king, there are other avenues that can attract visitors’ eyes to your content. One of those is Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and today we will share several search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that can help you reach the top of its search engine results pages (SERPs).
Why Should I Focus On SEO For Bing?
If you need some convincing to invest time and effort into optimizing for Bing, here is the first reason: Bing is still relevant. According to NetMarketShare, Google controls 82 percent of the search engine market share on desktops, laptops, mobile, and tablets. Who is in third? Bing, with six percent. But when it comes to market share for just desktops and laptops, Bing more than doubles to 13 percent, propelling it into second place among search engines behind Google.
Example of BING Search Engine Results Page
Besides its growing relevance, especially for desktop and laptop users, here is another reason to do SEO for Bing: It has exclusive viewers. Not everyone is a Google fan, and depending on your niche, you could strike gold by focusing on Bing. For instance, if your brand deals in business and finance, you will be glad to know that 72 percent of Bing searches on those topics come from visitors that do not use other search engines.
Other benefits of SEO for Bing include the fact that it has a lower bounce rate than Google, plus its users tend to view more pages. Bing is less harsh than Google when it comes to SEO, as they do not punish over-optimized pages to the same extent. Some say its image search functionality is better than Google, so if you have many images on your site, this could give you an edge via proper image SEO.
Bing is also the default search engine for popular apps like Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s entire line of products. Its paid advertising is less costly than Google. Lastly, you could gain a competitive edge over others in your market who ignore Bing altogether if you put some of your efforts into optimization there.
Read: Best Free Tools for SEO Analysis
Bing SEO Tips
Now that you have plenty of reasons to practice SEO for Bing, here are several methods to help you achieve that goal.
Does Including a Keyword in Your Domain Help?
Since its inception, rumors have stated that you can gain a nice SEO boost from Bing by simply having a keyword in your domain name. Some say this is a myth, but SEO icon Neil Patel says there is validity to the claim. Whatever the case may be, having your keyword in your domain certainly won’t hurt and as Neil demonstrates in the linked post above, it appears to help. What does also help in terms of domain is the fact that Bing appears to weigh domain authority (DA) higher more than Google does.
With that in mind, make sure that your website (overall) is very relevant to your topic or niche and put focus on your link building strategy to help build up your domain authority.
Implement Proper On-Page SEO Techniques
On-page SEO refers to optimizing your website’s pages so they can move up the search engine results in Google, Bing, and other search engines. There are multiple things you can do to optimize your on-page SEO for Bing, including:
- Use your primary keyword in the title tag – Each page’s head section has a title tag that gives search crawlers a clue as to the context of your content. For this reason, including your target keyword in the title tag is crucial. To get the best results, your keyword should be specific and relevant, and it should mesh with the content on the page.
- Insert keywords throughout your content – While including your target keyword in the title tag is essential, do not forget to include relevant primary and secondary keywords throughout your content in a natural manner. Bing will reward you with a higher ranking if you include such keywords multiple times.
- Include your primary keyword in the meta description – A visitor can see what a page is about by reading the meta description that is typically displayed beneath a page’s title in the search results. Not only should it offer details on what the link is about, but it should also be enticing to get the user to click. For on-page SEO purposes, be sure to include your target keyword in the meta description.
- Optimize your images – As mentioned, Bing has a particularly strong image search.
- Include an ALT tag with your primary keyword for each image to make the most of it.
- Add several images to each post as well, as that can help you surge up the rankings.
- Use header tags – You can boost your SEO efforts and make it easier for visitors to skim content via the proper use of header tags (H1-H6). They give your content order and let the visitor see what each page is about so they can quickly jump to their desired information. Include relevant keywords in your H2 or H3 subheadings to improve rankings, provided they fit naturally and match the content.
Read: Essential On-Page SEO Tips
Use The Connected Pages Feature
As you can probably tell by its name, this feature from Bing Webmaster Tools lets you connect social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) affiliated with your website. Why is this important? Because Bing uses social signals to rank sites.
By listing all of your social media pages, Bing can get a better idea of who is behind your page’s content, giving your brand an extra level of cohesiveness. It can also establish you as an authority on the subject (in theory) to give you an even bigger search engine boost, provided you have a steady following and engagement in your industry.
Use Anchor Text
By all accounts, Bing rewards anchor text at a higher level than Google, so be sure to implement anchor text on your pages when you link to other relevant pages on your site or the Internet.
Add Fresh Content Regularly
In Bing’s official webmaster guidelines, the search engine revealed that it loves fresh content. What is considered “fresh”? A page that offers the most up-to-date information.
While some content will still be relevant years down the line, you may have to update yours depending on your niche. If your website is new, do your best to produce fresh content regularly to build up your pages. If it is already filled with content, update your pages regularly so Bing can reward you with higher rankings. Remember to use Bing Webmaster Tools’ URL Submission feature when updating a post. This will ensure that your content gets indexed quickly.
Make Your Content As Relevant As Possible
While fresh content is great, it must also be relevant to your overall topic in Bing’s eyes. You can define relevance as matching search intent while also being helpful, entertaining, or informative.
An easy way to find relevant keyword terms is to look at “Related Searches” on Bing. You can then use the list of related searches to create new content, as you will now see what people are interested in. Beyond that simple tip, you can also use SEMrush or a similar tool to find relevant keywords that can help with your content creation.
Read: Best SEO Software for 2022
Provide A Solid User Experience
If you try to impress Bing instead of your visitors to improve your search engine rankings, you will probably miss the mark. To keep your visitors happy and coming back for more, do the following to provide a solid user experience:
- Increase your click-through rate (CTR) – The CTR represents how often people click on a search result after viewing it. You can increase your CTR by using descriptive URLs containing your target keyword, writing captivating headlines, and creating interesting meta descriptions that not only clearly explain your content, but that also have a strong call to action.
- Boost your page load speed – To keep your visitors from leaving due to poor performance and frustration, increase your page load speed by installing a caching plugin like WP Rocket or move to a quicker web host.
Use Tools For Bing SEO
Here are some examples of tools that can make it much easier to optimize your site for Bing:
Read more search engine optimization tutorials, tips, and SEO tool reviews.