Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Optimisation’

Microsoft Releases New Key SEO Features of Bing

Microsoft recently released a new 24 page document titled Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. The PDF file detailed not only interface updates on Bing, Microsoft’s own decision search engine, but also provides SEO tips for webmasters and web publishers. In addition, the white paper document contains instructive guidelines on how to create friendly, easy to index websites, as well as ways to make sites look attractive to search engine spiders.

Webmaster’s center

Bing’s primary function is to bridge users with websites and content across the Internet, a target all search engines aim for. So, what is different from other search engines you may ask? Unlike ordinary search engines, Bing offers categorized choices. Users can select options from the side tool bar, picking more to-the-point selections which, in the end, will reduce the amount of irrelevant sites popping up and saving the Bing users a lot of valuable time. 

Long tail strategies

Did you know that more than 300 factors are used in determining categorization and that the categories that appear are entity-dependent?  For example: if you search for [baby monitor], the search results may offer you options, such as “shopping”, “reviews”, “ratings”,  and “videos”, splitting up the search in convenient sections . Microsoft believes that this innovative way of organizing results provides new long tail opportunities for website owners.

Best match

A key objective of Bing is to deliver premium search results and one of the ways the search engine approaches this goal is through a new feature called “Best match.” Watch what happens when you conduct a search for a particular brand, such as Adidas, Toys R Us, Campbell’s, or Chrysler. The result is amazing. Bing will actually separate the official sites of these brands from the rest of the results, featuring a “Best Match”.

Bing Hover Links preview

One of the cool features Bing has to offer is “Bing Hover links”. Just hover your mouse over your search results and a window will pop up on the right of it. It will show a summary of that specific query result, as well as and important links related to that result. Webmasters feel this feature increases qualified traffic and helps searcher to find the information they want without having to leave the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This time-saving feature is truly appreciated by Bing users.

Data Extraction for previews

Through intelligent data extraction, Bing is able to compile useful information in the hover link section. This includes addresses, phone numbers, and email links the search engine has gathered not only from the content of a specific page, but from anywhere else on the Internet.

Flash recognition

Websites saturated with Flash and Silverlight-based content often lack readable Meta data text. Titles and descriptions in the HTML source code are so poor, web crawlers hardly notice them. In an effort to bring these empty-tagged websites out of obscurity, Bing implemented a new technology capable of extracting limited data.

Instant answers queries

Recently upgraded, Bing’s “Instant answers” feature now offers even more comprehensive and richer results to informal queries than ever. Type in a short question in the query box and wait to be impressed by the result!

Local listing center

Businesses should take advantage of the opportunity to list their company with Bing’s newest addition, the Local Listings Center.

Searchers and Surfers

Searchers who do not know how to start a new or specific search often refine their keywords and phrases halfway through their query. Furthermore, the more information is available, the more people adapt the way they search and surf the Internet. Microsoft has done a number of intense studies to analyze specific search patterns and behaviors. As a result, updates and additions were initiated. Microsoft’s goal is to improve searcher satisfaction by delivering faster, more accurate and complete results. It is a tough objective that, perhaps, is closer in reach than you think.

Visit Shout SEO Services to find out more.

Caffeine’s & Bing’s Impact on Search & SEO

Just because you have a good page ranking with Google, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are being found in other search engines. As the search engine market grows, so should your SEO campaign to include the new search engines.

According to statowl.com, which releases monthly statistics on search engine ranking by market share, as of June 09 Google had a 85% market share, followed by Yahoo with a 8% market share, Bing with a 4% market share and 3% market share going to other smaller search engines like AOL, MSN and Ask collectively.

These statistics show a small share of the market going to Bing in its first month. Bing is Mircosofts new search engine, setup as Microsofts answer to competing with the powerhouse search engine Google. That said, Microsoft says its early version will be updated over time as they learn more and develop the product.

In a calculated decision by Google to not loose more market share to Yahoo or Bing, Google is in its beta testing phase of its new search engine Caffeine. While there is hot debate as to why Google has created a new search engine, one thing is clear, its search algorithm is slightly different from the current Google search engine.

In a test to locate Design Lots website in the search results under “Brisbane website design” for all the major search engines as well as Caffeine, I found a good deal of variance between the different search engines.

This shows that an effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign will need to take into consideration the different search engines search techniques to maximise its effectiveness.

It also shows that just because your current SEO provider is doing well at getting you good Google ranking doesn’t mean they are thinking much about Bing or Caffeine.

Try searching for your business under a relevant keyword phrases (ie Design Lots would be “Brisbane web design” or “Brisbane graphic design”; a bike shop might be “brisbane bike shops” or “Taringa bike shops”). If you can’t find yourself when you are used to being on page one, ask some questions.

Optimization For The Yahoo Search Engine

Most companies today take advantage of the internet as a major marketing and information dissemination tool. To maximize the use of the internet, companies rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that their websites and web pages muster enough traffic. Although search engine optimization aims to have websites at the top of almost all search engine result pages (SERPs), it’s quite common to see search engine optimization focusing on major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo.

— Giant Search Engines Targeting —

It is hard to do search engine optimization resulting to a good ranking in almost all search engines since every search engine relies on different basis and categories on ranking sites. In other words, different search engines make use of different algorithms to determine every site’s importance. Criteria that search engines set for result ranking vary from search engine to search engine. As a result most SEO service providers opt to maximize sites for search engines that can provide the most ideal volume of traffic.

— Google-centric SEO is Short-Sighted SEO —

Most SEO’s would basically focus their efforts to maximize websites relative to Google because it is the most commonly used search engine. But if you take a closer look into the matter, you will conclude that disregarding the searches done through Yahoo could mean a considerable amount of lost traffic. Although Yahoo does not process as much searches as Google, it still consists a good fraction of the searches done on the internet.

— Balancing Google and Yahoo SEO —

Both Yahoo and Google depend on keyword density to rank a website. The only difference is that to optimize your site with the Yahoo search engine, a higher keyword frequency is required. Keyword density is more important a factor for Yahoo than it is for Google; although you don’t need to use the same word or group of words to attain the ideal keyword density. Yahoo will consider synonyms and other word variants that are of the same or related meaning to the given keyword to make up the keyword density calculation. Even the plural from of the keyword is still counted when considering keyword density.

Taking the keyword factor into consideration, though, Google and Yahoo possess a very different approach in keyword density. Since Yahoo is very much keyword-based, you may fear that stuffing your site with too many keywords would endanger your site ranking with Google. However, this is not really the case.

It is true that Google may turn its back on your site because of overwhelming keyword count. But as stated above, your site does not need to contain the same keyword form to attain the keyword density for Yahoo. Taking advantage of the fact that Yahoo counts synonyms, plural forms and variants in assessing keyword density, your site could justify both Yahoo’s and Google’s keyword requirement.

— Yahoo SEO Special —

Content is very important to attain a good ranking with the Yahoo search engine. This refers to both quantity and quality of your site’s contents. Be mindful of relevance of your site’s contents to a given keyword and at the same time make sure that your site is full of it. Adding relevant contents from time to time would also be a good strategy to take the top spots with the Yahoo search engine results pages.

Aside from content, format should not be taken for granted if you want to have Yahoo on your side. Unlike Google’s web spiders, Yahoo’s bot doesn’t dig deeper into your sites pages to index them. It is therefore very necessary for you to create a very good site map to guide this very lazy animal!

And lastly, even though Yahoo is very much into your site’s content when it comes to ranking in the SERPs, don’t forget that inbound links are still very important. Aside from making sure that your site does well with Google when it comes to links, Yahoo will also need the help it gets from inbound links to index your pages.