B2B Web Strategy Blog – eMagine

Ba-da-Bing! …does Microsoft’s new engine require different SEO?

July 16th, 2009 Posted by: Bill Gadless

It’s bedeviled webmasters and SEM practitioners since the dawn of the Bing age a month or so ago.  But in our analysis, and now with some good work by Julie Batten writing for ClickZ, it seems like “everything old is new again” (or maybe vice-versa).

Bing’s critical SERP-influencing elements appear to be…

Content – it’s king.  If you want to rank well on Bing, you must have great content;  in fact, rich content seems even more important on Bing.
Keyword placement.  Having keywords in all the right places (page titles, H1 tags and link text) is imperative with this engine.
Inbound links.  Bing appears to value inbound links, particularly those from “authoritative” sites that also have a high number of links.
Technically sound, well-built site.  Validating your code, checking for broken links, and employing appropriate redirects are explicitly recommended by MSN.

See anything dramatically new or different yet? …yeah, neither did we.  We’re not predicting that MS is done already, and this will never change;  but for now, it sure appears that today’s accepted SEO best practices will work just fine for Bing, too.
Do check out Julie’s piece, though;  it also includes a number of technical and content tips (and major no-no’s) gleaned from Bing’s Webmaster Center.

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy,Search Engine Marketing