Optimizing your Blog for Bing

Microsoft has been ignoring the advancements in the field of Search Engines and also Targeted Advertising for long time. However with the recent launch of Bing, they decided to start competing with Yahoo! and Google for their slice in the Search Engine business. Two days ago, on July 29th, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power the Yahoo! Search Engine. That said, it is a very smart move for every site and blog to optimize their structures and fit Bing needs. As we already know, Bing has a different algorithm than Google. Given Microsoft’s aggressive nature in fighting competition, it would be a grave mistake to underestimate them.

Bing Search Engine

The recently launched Bing Search Engine platform with upcoming versions of Windows OS is about to make Microsoft’s new search engine one of the biggest and most important players in the world of searching. Thus, it is very important to get good rankings in this new engine if you want the share of traffic they can give to your Blog.

So, what exactly they lay emphasis on? As with many of the other big Search Engines, Bing places heavy emphasis on unique site content. They allow higher keyword density than Google Search does. For Bing, it is recommended to keep your pages at least 200 words long and include phrases which people commonly use. Another important point of Bing is having your Blog CSS and HTML validated. I made sure that my WordPress Theme Patagonia is 100% Valid CSS level 2.1 and XHTML 1.0 Transitional.


Yes, Bing goes to the point of asking Webmasters to ensure that their pages and blogs are HTML validated too. They have a strong preference for well-written code. If a Website’s coding is poorly written, it appears that Bing downgrades the site’s search rankings heavily. So, you won’t have any problems here when you use my WordPress Theme Patagonia, which is both, CSS and HTML 100% valid code.  As with Google Search Engine, Bing gives a lot of relevance to the number and quality of sites that link to your pages.

Another point to take into consideration is a well-designed and optimized sitemap with good link text. This will help the Bing spider to crawl your site and ensure that all pages are properly indexed. You can find some good site maps plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory.  According to Bing, your Title tag should be less than 80 characters long and should be attractive enough to make the surfer click on the link and visit your site. Bing doesn’t rank based on Meta Keywords and Site Description. However, they seem to place importance on meta tags, so adding appropriate meta tags for each page will be a very good move. Bing recommends that a single HTML page with no pictures should be under 150 KB in size. So, make sure that you limit the size of your Web pages to a reasonable limit.

27 Comments

  1. Hi

    I have just uploaded your template to commence the design of my blog and I wonder how you change the date on the main screen.

    Does it work in conjunction with the widget calender of is it stand alone and if so how do you change the date. It is showing July 29th and today is August 2nd.

    I like it.

    regards

    Phil Griffiths

    • Hello Phil,

      the date on your posts, shows the date when you make a new post. You can make a test post and play it a bit to see how it works. To make a new post just go to “Posts -> Add New”.

      Greetings,
      Alex.

  2. I think this was a very interesting post, thanks for writing it!

  3. Great article . Will definitely apply it to my blog.Thanks.

  4. my initial test result shows that Bing is as good as Google when displaying relevant search results. Google might be having a tough competitor with Microsofts own search engine.

  5. Hello. Thank you for this great info! Keep up the good job!

  6. Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!

  7. thank you! I really liked this post!

  8. Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.

  9. Microsoft Bing would be the closet competitor of Google. but i still use Google because it shows more relevant results on the serp.

  10. i have been evaluating the search results of Microsoft Bing compared to Google and they are comparable. Bing gives almost the same relevant search results just like Google.

  11. Hi,
    Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you.
    Thank you

  12. Bing search engine gives almost the same search results as Google. Looks like Google will now have a tough competition when it comes to search engine technology.

  13. Hi there,
    Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!

  14. Hey thanks for the information. I’ve been trying to look for ways to move my site up in the Bing ranks for a while and this will probably help. Nice article!

  15. Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!

  16. BING search engine is just as good as Google. In my own personal experience, Google does give more releveant search result than Bing but the difference is very small.

  17. i am a user of Microsoft BING search engine and it is as good as google search. for searching blogs, i think google gives more relevant search results compared bing.

  18. my default search engine is Yahoo but now i am using BING because it is much better than Yahoo. i heard that Bing search engine would power Yahoo search also.

  19. I think that Bing is not as good as Google. Google would still index new websites faster than Bing. Microsoft would still need a lot of catching to do with GoogleBot.

  20. Like the design, template, post is decent, writing is good. I’ll probably check your blog again….

  21. I use Bing and Google whenever i want to find something on the internet. I think that both search engines are very good.

  22. it is only a matter of time before Bing Microsoft acquires Yahoo search engine.

  23. I still frequently use Google despite the appearance and popularity of the Bing search engine.

  24. Bing is a good search engine but Google edges a little bit better.

  25. I would have to say that Google is slightly better than Bing search engine.

  26. Bing and Google are both great search engines and they yield almost similar relevant results.

Comments are closed