Bing SEO: A Complete Guide to Understand The Search Engine Better

In the digital marketing space, Bing is like the cousin everyone knows, but not everyone interacts with it. It’s the moment when you know about them you figure out how cool and fun they are.

Bing is that low-key hidden one that might not be so popular but can create an impact in bringing relevant traffic to your site.

We have noticed that marketers love Google (which is absolutely alright), but they have missed optimizing the second most important search engine for their growth.

If you have landed here, we believe you are the curious one looking to learn about Bing SEO. And here you will find exactly what you are looking for. 🎉

Table of Contents

• Bing Then And Now
• Benefits of Bing SEO
• How is Bing SEO different from Google SEO?
• What Are The Ranking Factors For Bing SEO?
• How Does Bing Rank Websites?
• How to Rank Higher on Bing: Handy Bing SEO Tips
• Tools for effective Bing SEO

Bing Then And Now

Bing, also known as Microsoft Bing, is a key player in the market since 2009. Before Bing, Microsoft had three different search engines MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search.

Microsoft came up with many changes and different approaches to make the search more relevant and connect users to the most relevant search result. Let us have a look at some:

👉2005: Microsoft came up with its web crawler property
👉2006: They set their image search algorithm
👉2009: Launched Microsoft Bing
👉2022: Rebranded Bing with a new look and feel
👉2023: Released Bing AI

Looking at Bing’s efforts over the years, it is easy to say they are building itself as a powerful search engine to help find the needed information instantly.

Currently, the search engine has a market share of 8.85% which might seem a lot compared to Google, but the search engine can leverage your efforts to bring relevant traffic to your site, which matters the most at the end of the day.

Benefits of Bing SEO

1. Transparent ranking factor

Compared to Google, Bing has more transparent ranking factors widely available for marketers to access and optimize their Bing SEO efforts accordingly. The ranking factors are less mysterious, and they periodically update their guidelines to help you make your next move accordingly.

2. Best for small businesses

Bing is a great platform for local businesses while they are just starting their digital marketing journey. Since the competition on Google is very high, Bing makes it easier to rank higher, and also the advertising cost is much less compared to Google.

3. Less Competition

Using Bing, you get a competitive advantage since many marketers are neglecting Bing SEO optimization. By making the most of this missed opportunity, you can get a higher spot compared to Google.

If you are struggling with your visibility on Google, you can make the most out of Bing as you continue to build your brand and domain.

4. Bing Powers Yahoo

Bing and Yahoo hold the 2nd and 3rd positions as the most popular search engine today. And here is the interesting part: if you carefully work on one search engine optimization, you can easily rank on the other.

Since 2009, Bing powers the Yahoo search engine. So if you optimize well for Bing, you will naturally see results on Yahoo.

5. Bing Powers Voice

The influence of voice searches is growing each day. And Bing voice searches have become a household name because of Alexa.

Bing powers Alexa and Cortana voice searches. Additionally, Cortana is responsible for 19% of searches happening around the market.

6. Bing AI with ChatGPT 

Earlier this year, Bing announced an AI-powered search, making this an ultimate game changer. The search engine grabbed a lot of marketers’ attention with this move.

You can easily ask detailed questions, and the AI will respond accordingly.

How is Bing SEO Different From Google SEO?

As the popular saying goes, everyone is different. The same applies to these search engines too. The ranking factor that these platforms use might be similar, but they work differently in how they analyze and rank.

Let’s understand both of their approaches.

Ranking factors	Bing SEO	Google SEO
Keywords	Bing focuses on precise keywords that a user is looking for and likes to rank your site if it serves the purpose. Bing goes for a more straightforward approach.	Google adopts a semantic search approach. That means they analyze the search intent and the context behind the keyword and also keep a close eye on related keywords.
Backlinks	Bing favors quality backlinks over quantity backlinks and good domain age. If you have a good domain age with high-quality links, they are most likely to boost your ranking more.	Google values Backlinks as much as Bing does. Google places more trust in PageRank of a domain giving the link. Google values more if your website has more quality links to your content.
Social signals	Bing openly states that social media is a ranking factor they consider. Bing sees a well-influenced social media channel in a positive light and favors it in the search results.	Google denies that social signals play a key role in page ranking. They see social media as a platform to bring traffic to the site, which indirectly helps to rank higher. But it is not a direct ranking factor.
Multimedia	Bing has the ability to crawl and understand various multimedia content accurately. When Flash gained popularity, Bing could easily crawl and index the site.	Multimedia do matter for Google but not as much as Bing. They focus more on text-based content.
Crawling	Bing doesn’t crawl pages as frequently and tends to focus mainly on key pages.	Google usually relies on indexing and crawling every page on your website.

What Are The Ranking Factors For Bing SEO?

Bing’s algorithm is pretty different from Google’s search engine. Bing heavily relies on machine learning, not that Google doesn’t, but Bing is on the heavier side. Let’s break down and see what factors Bing takes into consideration while ranking a web page.

1. Relevance

Bing looks closely at how the content on your page matches the search query. It considers factors like content duplication, spamminess, readability and engagement, and more.

2. Credibility

Bing says that it looks at the website and the author’s reputation to decide the credibility of the site. And it demotes content that includes name-calling, offensive content, or the use of derogatory language.

3. User Experience

The user experience on a page is a ranking factor for Bing. They fix their eyes on how the user is engaging with the search results. Bing considers the following factors to analyze the user experience:

👉Click Through Rate – The number of users who especially clicked through a particular result.
👉Dwell time/time on site – How much time did the user spend on the page after clicking, or did they quickly return to the search results?
👉Adjusted or reformulated their query – Here Bing notices did the user change or adjust their query.

4. Fresh Content

Bing prefers and picks content that is fresh and has up-to-date information. It favors newly published content or completely optimized content.

5. User-Specific Location

Bing does take into consideration where the user is searching for it, and also includes where the website host location, the language of the document, and other visitors arriving on the page.

6. Page Load Time

Bing like it when a site loads faster as it gives a better experience to the user. Low page speed can indicate to the search engine that your site might be as user-friendly as it should be.

How Does Bing Find/Index/Rank Websites?

Now, we will move to the technical side of Bing and understand how it finds and discovers your website to rank on search results.

1. Sitemaps

Sitemaps help Bing to discover the overall content on your website. It can include files, images, videos, URLs, and other information. Your sitemap communicates information to the crawlers about your page.

2. IndexNow API

This functionality is helpful to reflect any changes done to your site instantly. You can submit the API or use Bing Webmaster Tool or include them in your sitemap.

3. Links

Quality links (Backlinks and Internal links) within your site help Bing find new content and new pages from your site. Bing recommends that you should link all pages on your site to at least one other crawlable page.

4. Robots txt

A robot.txt informs search engine crawlers which files they can crawl and which they can’t. This helps to instruct and manage the crawler traffic.

5. Crawl Control

This feature allows you to manage how Bingbot crawls your content. Bing recommends enabling Bingbot to crawl your site quickly and ensure as much of your content gets discovered and crawled.

How to Rank Higher on Bing: Handy Bing SEO Tips

We hope you are clear here about Bing and how it functions. Now, let’s get to the interesting part and see what you can do to rank higher on search engines.

1. Conduct proper keyword research

A. Finding profitable keywords 

Be it Google or any other search engine, your keywords play a key role in ranking your content piece for the right query. It is not very useful if you write a blog on the best coffee powder in the market and rank for the coffee machine maker keyword.

Conducting well-planned keyword research is a must to bring in quality traffic that perfectly matches the keyword intent. And whatever content you build on that keyword, Bing indexes it deeply and ranks accordingly.

Bing suggests creating content in the area of proficiency rather than just picking a keyword that is trending.

B. Use Bing’s Keyword Research Tool

Bing’s keyword research tool is a helpful tool for selecting keywords that really matter. Let’s have a practical breakdown of how to use Bing Webmaster for your keyword research.

#1: You will first have to add your root keyword for Webmaster to offer you suggestions on matching and other relevant keywords. You can add your input from the tool’s search box on the top.

After entering your root keyword, you will see the search volume trend and impression for each keyword.

#2: After getting the basic idea of a particular keyword, you can add filters based on country, language, and devices to get in-depth in your research. And you can adjust the time frame from 3 months (which is set by default) to 6 months.

#3: Now, you have all the data in hand. It is time to understand this information to build your content strategy. Bing Webmaster breaks down the data into three lists:

• Related keywords- Here you will find a set of different keyword ideas that relate to your root keyword. It sorts these keywords by relevance by default.
• Question keywords- In this section, you will see the set of questions asked by the users based on the related keywords. This helps you understand what type of questions are the users asking online.
• Newly discovered- This set of keywords is a subset of related keywords because they are relevant to your root keyword in the last 30 days.

They also offer URLs ranking in the top 10 for the root keyword.

C. Optimizing keywords for Bing

After carefully doing this research, optimize the usage of keywords in your content. As Bing loves exact keywords, try to go as specific as possible. We recommend sticking to exact keywords rather than semantics keywords, as Bing doesn’t favor them like Google.

You can include the specific keywords in your H1 and H2 tags and sprinkle them in your meta description and alt tags. It will help you rank better. Ensure to make this process more natural than stuffing your keywords into the content.

2. On-Page Optimization for Bing

On-page optimization means you take all the measures within a web page to improve its ranking on the search engines and, in this case, Bing. Here are some practical steps to conduct on-page optimization on Bing.

A. Title tags and meta descriptions

Google clearly states it doesn’t consider meta description as its ranking factor in its algorithm. But that’s not the case with Bing. You must write a descriptive meta description with your target keyword to rank higher.

An interesting title and meta description can improve your CTR and improve traffic on your site significantly.

B. Header tags

Make sure to use relevant and structured header tags from H2 to H6. As Bing heavily relies on exact keywords. You should use the main keyword in your header tags without making it look too forced.

C. Content optimization

Bing loves quality content that is engaging and informative to address the user’s query. As per Bing, there are three pillars for quality content.

• Authority: Bing evaluates the authority of your page before ranking it on search results. Your social media network, cited sources, and more play a role in determining the authority of your page.
  
• Utility: Here Bing tries to analyze if the content is sufficient to fulfill the user query. Does the page provide enough content to meet the user’s requirements?
  
• Presentation: How well is the information presented on the page? Is the content easy to read, or the navigation works well? 

D. Image optimization

Bing loves images or any other form of multimedia. Also, Bing is very good at crawling and indexing image content. Go ahead and add a good number of images with relevant alt tags.

E. Internal linking

Internal links help to improve the relevancy of your content and also help Bing to discover new content on your web page. Bing loves when you use relevant anchors while linking your internal page.

For example: For your coffee store landing page, the best anchor would be coffee store instead of try this coffee shop today.

Going specific always while doing Bing SEO.

3. Local SEO for Bing

A. Bing Local Pack

The local pack helps your users to locate your business while searching for a product like yours online. This gives you an extra edge to boost your online presence and visibility. Currently, Bing has come up with a minimal design for the Local pack that shows information about the store when a user clicks on it.

B. Bing Places for Business

Bing Places is Microsoft’s version of Google My Business. The goal of Bing Places is to connect local people with the solution they’re looking for online. If you have a newly created profile, we recommend you fill in all the required details and use images of your product & services as well. Images do a lot of talking on Bing.

C. Optimizing for local keywords

Try to rank for local keywords and optimize your content accordingly. Using keywords for heading tags, focusing on local link building, optimizing your page for mobile devices, and consistently optimizing your content are ways to improve your local SEO.

D. Online reputation management

Here your customer success team needs to be on their toes to check what the users are talking about your brand online. Replying to positive queries and also acknowledging negative ones are equally important.

General optimization tips

• Bing Ads: Bing Ads is an effective channel of growth and grabbing users’ attention at an economical price. Bing Ads are less competitive and economical than Google, which can help you pull relevant users to your platform.
• Quality Backlinks: Bing always prefers quality backlinks over quantity. The better quality of links you have on your site, the higher your chances to rank for specific keywords.
• Leverage your Social Media: Bing takes social media more seriously than Google while ranking your query. Your social media factors like the number of followers, post likes, comments, and more play a key role for Bing to understand your brand better.

Which tools can be used for effective Bing SEO?

1. Microsoft Bing Webmaster

Bing Webmaster is a tool offered by Microsoft that allows you to add your site to the Bing crawlers so that they can crawl your site and show them in the search results. Just like Google offers Google Search Console, Bing offers Bing Webmaster.

We would highly recommend you check out our detailed guide on Bing Webmaster that covers the ins and outs of this tool: The Definitive Guide to Bing Webmaster Tools.

Now, let’s just have an overview of how you can add your site to Bing Webmaster.

Step 1: Open your free Bing Webmaster tools account. Here you can log in for Microsoft, Google, or Facebook.

Step 2: Now move ahead and add your site to the account. Here you will need to verify that you are the owner of the website. You can pick from various ownership verification methods that best suits your preference.

In this case, we have picked the XML file method.

Step 3: Add the copied HTML tag in the head section of your website, and click on Verify.

 

Bing will show a green checkmark as a sign of verification.

After finishing all the steps, you can submit and create your sitemaps. They are a great way to tell Bing about the URLs on your site.

After this process within 48 hours, you will be able to see the data. Using the data, you can start creating your foolproof SEO strategy to grow your site accordingly.

Using Bing Webmaster you can:

• Analyze the Backlink profile of your site. You can get a list of domains, pages linked to your site, and its anchor text.
• Conduct in-depth keyword research to pick a perfect keyword before starting any campaign or writing a blog.
• You can scan sites that crawl and checks for any technical SEO issues that might be on your site.
• You can use their SEO report to understand the errors across your entire site, and you can take action accordingly.

2. Bing Search Quality Blog

This page is specially dedicated to understanding the behind-the-scenes of Bing. You can learn to optimize your content better, learn the latest technology implemented in Microsoft, learn about webmasters, and more.

This page will act as your navigational guide in understanding Bing more deeply: Microsoft Bing Blogs

3. Microsoft SEO Toolkit

This IIS search engine optimization (SEO) toolkit is for web developers, hosting providers, and web server administrators to make their site content more search engine-friendly and improve engagement on the page.
The tool kit includes three major components, which are the Site Analysis module, Robots Exclusion module, & Sitemaps and Site Indexes module.

Conclusion 

Investing your time in Bing SEO will be all worth it if you carry out this task with all focus. As many marketers are not using the search engine to its full potential, you can have a competitive advance. We hope our blog helped you understand Bing better, and if you found it helpful, share it with your marketer friends for good karma.

In case of any questions, feel free to write them in the comment section. We’re here to help. 🙂

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Bing good for SEO?
Ans: Definitely, yes. Bing is the 2nd most used search engine in today’s time. Using Bing for SEO, you can see steady growth in your site traffic.

2. Is Bing SEO different from Google?
Ans: Yes, Bing’s SEO approach is slightly different from Google’s. The factor these search engines consider might look the same, but their approach is quite different.

3. How do I get traffic on Bing?
Ans: Focus on three aspects to get traffic on your site: On-Page Optimization, proper keyword optimization, and quality backlink exchange.

Image source: Bing