The majority of online users use search engines to search for anything on the internet. Google is the most preferred search engine with around 91.86% market share. Microsoft’s Bing is the second largest search engine with 2.71% of the market share. Here we will focus on SEO ranking factors for Bing.
About Microsoft Bing
Bing search engine was launched by Microsoft Corporation on 03, June 2009 in San Diego, California. In October 2020 this search engine was renamed, Microsoft Bing. This is the second most used search engine option worldwide in the Year 2020 as highlighted by Statcounter. Bing is available in 40 languages.
Microsoft Bing uses an algorithm to show relevant and useful search results based on user’s search queries. You should consider some important ranking factors, based on Bing Webmaster Guidelines if you want to rank your business in Bing search results. As ranking in Microsoft Bing, in addition to Google, can help your business with more brand awareness, engagement, and traffic.
SEO Ranking Factors for Bing
1. Relevance of Content
Relevance is all about how closely content on your webpage matches the intent behind the user’s search query. Bing also considers synonyms or abbreviations, other than exact match, so you can also add relevant synonyms in your content.
2. Quality and Credibility of Website
Bing determines the quality and credibility of your website based on evaluation of the webpage, including such factors as the author’s or site’s reputation
3. User Engagement with Search Results
Bing considers how users interact with webpages ranking in search results. The Bing Webmaster Dashboard provides insights into how users interact with your webpages.
4. Freshness of Content
Bing prefers fresh content as also preferred by Google. So the webpages should consistently provide up-to-date information. But exceptionally some old content can also rank well within Bing search results if it remains relevant.
5. Location of User and Webpage
While showing search results Bing also considers:
- Location, Country and City, of the user
- Where the webpage is hosted
- Language of the document
- Location of other visitors to the ranked webpage
6. Page Load Speed
Bing considers the page load time of your webpages while ranking in search results. You should consider a faster page load of your website pages while providing a good overall user experience. This can help your website to rank well in both Bing and Google search engines.
SEO Practices to Avoid for Bing
1. Avoid Cloaking
If you want to show different content to the users than the Bingbot crawler then it will be termed as spam and these type of webpages will not be shown in search results.
2. Link Spamming
Never consider doing link spamming like buying inbound links or artificial links to your website pages as this will not help your website to rank in Bing organic search results.
3. Duplicate Content
Don’t use duplicate content across multiple webpages in your website as Bing loses trust in URLs with duplicate content. These types of pages can’t rank in Bing search results.
4. Keyword Stuffing
You should create your content for your users to match with their search intent by leveraging relevant keywords. Avoid stuffing keywords within body content as it can lead to delisting from Bing search.
5. Malicious Behavior
You should keep maintaining your Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress and make sure to not participate in phishing or installing viruses by verifying your content. Keep a limit on access to publishers on your website.
6. Irrelevant Structured Markup
Always leverage correct and related structured markups that should match with the webpage. You should avoid any structured markup which is irrelevant or inaccurate.
Summary
Once you consider these ranking factors for Microsoft Bing you will be able to improve your website’s rankings in this search engine. Following these ranking factors and avoiding few SEO practices as highlighted above will also help your website to perform well in Google which is #1 in global internet engagement as per Alexa rank.
Additionally, if you know about how search engines rank your website content then it can help you to create discoverable, relevant, and authoritative content. This way you can get more real estate in search engine results pages (SERP).
We will keep updating these ranking factors in case of any major updates from Microsoft Bing come in future.