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Should your SEO strategy ignore Bing? image

Should your SEO strategy ignore Bing?

Untitled SEO Podcast
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18 Plays7 months ago

Welcome back! Today's discussion revolves around a platform that often flies under the radar in the SEO world: Bing. Despite its smaller user base compared to Google, Bing is making strides that could influence your SEO strategy.

Bing's Growing Influence

Recently, Bing announced an impressive milestone of 140 million active users. While still modest compared to Google, this growth indicates a rising relevance in the search engine landscape. This expansion may be attributed to various factors including strategic integrations and investments by Microsoft, hinting at Bing's untapped potential in SEO.

Why Consider Bing?

Historically viewed with skepticism, Bing was often joked about in SEO circles as a default browser on Microsoft devices rather than a serious choice. However, this perception is outdated. Over the years, Microsoft has significantly invested in Bing, integrating advanced AI technologies like those from OpenAI, which might be enhancing user engagement.

The Technical Edge

Bing's technological evolution is noteworthy. It includes features reminiscent of Google's capabilities a decade ago, such as a reliance on meta keywords. While Bing’s ability to crawl and understand context may not match Google's current standards, its simpler approach could offer unique optimization opportunities.

Practical SEO Tips for Bing
  1. Bing Webmaster Tools: Sign up for free to stay informed about how Bing views and ranks your website. This tool is crucial for anyone serious about understanding diverse search engine dynamics.
  2. SEO Strategy: Given Bing's current market position and technical capabilities, a modest investment in optimizing for Bing could yield beneficial insights and potential gains.
Conclusion

Bing is gradually carving out a space for itself in the competitive search engine market. By integrating AI tools effectively and continuing to evolve, Bing may present a viable component of a comprehensive SEO strategy. Signing up for Bing Webmaster Tools is a simple yet effective step to leverage Bing’s potential.

For more insights and updates, remember to like, share, and subscribe. Until next time, keep optimizing!

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Transcript

Introduction to Bing in SEO

00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to the Untitled SEO Podcast. Today we're going to talk about Bing. Bing doesn't get talked about very much in the world of SEO, at least not yet. In this video I'm going to look at why you possibly should re-address the way you view Bing.

Bing's Active Users and Market Role

00:00:16
Speaker
Maybe you should have Bing as a part of your SEO strategy.
00:00:20
Speaker
So this podcast has come about because there was a news article that came out today where Bing, well Microsoft, are proudly telling the world that they now have 140 million active users on Bing. Now this is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the number of people who use Google. It's minuscule, but it is interesting. So why is their market share up?
00:00:45
Speaker
There used to be a joke in SEO, or at least in my circles, that people only use Bing by accident. If you buy a new Microsoft device, it's probably going to have Bing set as the default search engine. In fact, there was a weird period where for a little while, when you installed some other bits of software, for some reason Bing would also then get set as your default search. Very strange. We have to look at how much Microsoft invests in Bing.

Microsoft's Investment in Bing

00:01:12
Speaker
I mean, you know, they've chucked some money at it. That's true. But they've not always loved it. It's been a little bit like, I don't know, maybe a pet that wasn't perhaps house trained very well. Google tried to sell Bing to Apple or Apple tried to buy Bing off Microsoft, one of those two.
00:01:31
Speaker
So it hasn't always had all the investment, but over the last few years it has changed a lot. Especially with the integrations and the hand-in-hand AI things, so OpenAI who create chat GPT, there is some of their technology in being search results.

AI Technology's Influence on Bing

00:01:51
Speaker
Maybe people like that. We know that a small proportion of search appetite is being fulfilled by AI now.
00:02:00
Speaker
I don't think it's, we're miles away from it being able to take over search engines, but it's always worth trying to look what's just beyond the bleeding edge in SEO. So Bing is on the rise and
00:02:15
Speaker
you know, let's not forget Google hasn't always been the top dog. They have been the most popular search engine for many, many years. But it wasn't always that way. When I started in SEO, people optimized what we call doorway pages like little front end bits of their site for Altavista, Hotbot, Jeeves, Yahoo, I'm not going to start listing old search engines.
00:02:42
Speaker
We're still in the very early days of the internet. That means we're still in the early days of SEO. Who knows, in 50 years' time, how people will be using the internet. I'm getting off topic.

SEO Strategy for Bing

00:02:53
Speaker
So if you want to include being as a part of your SEO strategy, what can you do? How much time should you invest on it?
00:03:01
Speaker
To answer the second question first, I wouldn't invest a lot of time. I'd sort of cock an eye and look over at Bing every now and then just to see what's going on. But one thing you can do is sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools. It's free, and just like with Google Search Console, used to be called Webmaster Tools, it's a useful way of just staying a bit better informed.
00:03:26
Speaker
Ignorance is not rewarded in SEO at all. It really, really isn't. So just sign up for Webmaster Tools. I think that's probably about all you need to do. Although if you're interested in the differences between how Google looks at your website and how Bing looks at your website and how they both rank you,
00:03:46
Speaker
You can kind of, in a very simplistic way, think of Bing's abilities as being like Google's abilities 15 maybe 10 years ago.

Comparing Bing to Google's Past

00:03:59
Speaker
Bing can't crawl as well as Google. It can't understand context as well as Google. So it relies on some of the things that Google now ignores, like meta keywords, remember them? But don't go and start putting meta keywords all over everything. We're just getting that horrible mess that we were 15 years ago.
00:04:17
Speaker
So it looks at things in a far more simplistic way. And because of that, I don't think there's probably much you need to do to your website. If somebody who's an expert in being SEO is watching this and screaming at me, get in touch. I wanna know. I wanna know if I'm wrong. But for now,
00:04:40
Speaker
There's words in here somewhere. There's words in this brain.

Conclusion and Call to Action

00:04:44
Speaker
For now, just be aware that Bing is on the rise, probably because of the AI tools that it integrates very well with, and go sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools. That's it for today. Thank you for listening and watching, depending on where you are. Please send comments, like, share, subscribe, all that cool stuff.
00:05:06
Speaker
I've been Andrew Laws, I shall remain Andrew Laws of Yesio. Until the next time, tutty bye.