by amanda smyth
7/9/2009 11:10:00 AM
These are the questions on everyone's mind. What is BING? How will it affect my SEO strategy? What does this mean to all of the hard work I have put into my content and optimization?
Here are some of the guidelines we have seen pop up so far with regard to Bing and how it categorizes search listings.
First of all, there is much talk that Bing, as an engine, is smarter or "more aware" than Google bots are. (Oh my God, this is it. The robots have become self-aware. This is my ultimate nightmare.)
Bing appears to not only "find" your content, but it makes intelligent decisions regarding what your content is, which are driven by a slightly different set of rules than Google uses. (Be aware that this is speculation. I have no hard facts or proof.)
Bing appears to weigh the "age" of a domain more heavily. The longer you have been around, the more street cred you carry as a website.
Bing likes content. But not just some content, loads of content. Bing appears to respond better to pages with at least 300 words of text or more.
Google has not placed as much weight on bloggers in the past. It is said that Bing is a friend of bloggers and may weigh blogs quite heavily.
Bing appears to like great titles that are directly relevant to your content. So don't phone in your titles, you lazy shlub.
Keep your URL's simple. Bing hasn't got time to read your URL manifestos. He is a busy guy with places to be.
Lastly, Bing likes outbound links, contrary to Google that has, in the past, prevented websites from posting too many outbound links out of fear of lowering their rank.
Make sure your website allows MSNbots to crawl your content. If you don't know how to do this, go find your IT guy. Those guys are magical.
