How To Increase Your Search Traffic Matthew Woodward Updated on Nov 21, 2019 The Big BingBing is the sleeping giant of the SEO world. By the end of 2018, Bing had 8.36% of the search engine market share! And it doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon. The platform has been growing and continues to grow all around the world- bing search engine growth (I call this moment the “Bing Bang”. It never caught on. But I’m still trying!) This small but significant shift in power has created a new opportunity for SEOs. So I’m going to show you how to take advantage of that change with my Bing SEO guide. What Will I Learn? [show] Is Bing SEO Traffic Valuable? Many SEOs feel searches on Bing and Yahoo are not as valuable as searches on Google. I’m not sure why this would be the case. They’re still people, right? In my experience, they are just as valuable and even surpass Google. I decided to dig into my own data. Here’s what I found: Bing SEO Traffic Performance The data tells me everything I need to know. Traffic coming from Bing: Has a lower bounce rate Visits more pages Spends more time on site Subscribes to my list more Clicks more affiliate links Check your own data before passing judgement though! The Great Bing SEO Advantage The best thing about change is – people hate change. Change pushes people out of their comfort zones and humans are wired to avoid that. So for those willing to evolve with change there is a great opportunity here. Bing Google Ranking Factors Since 1998 SEOs have purely focused on ranking sites in Google. That’s two decades of focus on one platform! This has made Google’s search market results highly competitive. In that time Bing has been largely ignored. And SEOs write off trying to improve their Bing rankings by saying… “If you rank well in Google you’ll also rank well in Bing”. But is that the case? Well… not quite: bing visibility Their algorithms are remarkably different. Just compare results for the same term and you will quickly see what I mean. It’s important to understand those key differences to take advantage of ‘The Big Bing’ (it will catch on). Free Tools And Resources For Bing Marketers Unlike Google, Bing are SEO friendly. They offer a range of free tools to help you understand and use their algorithm and it would be a good idea to take advantage of them. #1 – Bing Webmaster Guidelines Reading the Bing Webmaster Guidelines is the quickest way to get yourself up to speed. You will learn all the dos and don’ts of Bing SEO. It’s not as long/complicated as Google’s guidelines so won’t take you long to read. #2 – Bing Webmaster Tools The Bing Webmaster Tools is superb! If you haven’t got your site setup there yet, do it now. It provides an awesome suite of tools including a backlink explorer! You can also see exactly… Which keywords you rank for How your site indexes Diagnose problems and much more As of right now you will also get $100 of free advertising credit to play with – sweet! #3 – Bing SEO Analyzer The Bing Website Analyzer is also a great tool to discover… …especially if your pages are following Bing SEO best practices. Just enter your URL and it will return a list of suggestions to improve your rankings. Download Here #4 – Microsoft SEO Tool Kit More of an unknown tool the free Microsoft SEO Tool Kit This is a desktop application that spiders your website to find SEO problems. It is very easy to use and well – it is 100% free so what is not to like! #5 – Bing Webmaster Blog Just like Google there is also a Bing Webmasters Blog You should have a read through & subscribe. Some of the posts are actually quite entertaining and often have some golden nuggets! #6 – Bing Search Quality Blog Imagine if Matt Cutts and the Google search quality/anti-spam team published a blog Imagine if on that blog they shared what they’ve been trying & testing. Well Bing do exactly that! Their Search Quality Blog offers best practices and some amazing insights into the world of search. #7 – Contacting The Bing Webmaster Team Last but not least. Perhaps one of the best tools… Is the ability to contact the Bing webmaster team. So if your site does have problems or gets hit for any reason. You can easily get in touch with the team directly to work things out. Bing Ranking Factors – The Complete Guide So what makes Bing tick at its core? Here’s a list of the most important factors to optimize your website for. bing ranking factors Let’s take a closer look at each of those points- #1 – User Engagement Is Very Important One of the strongest signals in Bing is user engagement. They measure this through a term known as ‘pogo sticking’ which is when someone performs a search, clicks on a result and then clicks back to return to the search results. Bing Pogo Sticking So if lots of people visit your site from the search results and click the ‘back’ button – This is a clear indication of a poor user experience to Bing. However if lots of people visit your site from the search results and do not go back to them to continue searching – This is a very very strong signal. #2 – Click Through Rates Matter Bing also measures click-through rates from its search result pages. They use that data combined with the user engagement data above to improve its results. For example: (all things being equal) If the #1 position gets a 20% click-through rate. But The #2 position gets 40% – This is a clear indication that the #2 result is more relevant. This means you have to write your titles and descriptions with humans in mind. But you also need to be specific with your keyword. Think keyword based click bait. #3 – Social Signals Do Matter There is a lot of debate on whether social media signals impact Google’s search rankings. I can categorically tell you with 100% certainty – that they do. I’ve been using them to rank consistently for the past 2 years. I revealed exactly how at a recent conference. Don’t get caught up in the change debate just make sure social signals are part of your social media SEO strategy now. They affect your rankings in both Bing AND Google. But Bing has a much stronger reliance on social signals than Google. You should use the power of social media to your advantage and you will see benefits in both search engines. #4 – Bing Authorship Google famously introduced (and then killed) Authorship allowing people to claim content they have written. This meant Google could determine who are the true experts in any given industry. Granted they have killed Authorship for now (but are still tracking who is who via entities & schema data). Bing also had it’s own version Authorship after they integrated Klout verified snapshots. But Klout is now dead as well. So instead you should take advantage of the Bing connected pages feature- bing connected pages Just add all of your profiles and hit the verify button. Easy! #5 – Backlinks Are Less Important (But Still Important) Links aren’t held in such high regard as they are by Google. But, they’re still playing a role in Bing SEO. To quote a recent article from Search Engine Land: “A Microsoft spokesperson from Bing told us, “There are a variety of factors that come into play with ranking signals, links being one of them.” They also explained that links are still a very important ranking signal, and they don’t see that changing any time soon.” I’d recommend that you continue to build links to your site. It will help you on the majority of search engines. But pay close attention to Bing’s movements over the next few years. #6 – Inbound Anchor Text Is More Important Bing puts more emphasis on the anchor text usage than Google does. If you want to rank for ‘Blue Widgets’ you need links that use ‘Blue Widgets’ as the anchor. Bing isn’t as good as Google at keyword matching. While Google does well with recognizing synonyms and context around a keyword, Bing needs spoon feeding. The risk here is that over optimising your anchor text will trip the Google Penguin filter. So the trick here is… Make sure that the links coming from high authority sites focus on exact anchors! While the others use a mix of anchor terms. That will allow you rank in Bing while dodging Google Penguin. #7 – Keyword Domains Matter Having your keyword in your domain name will help you to rank easier. It isn’t critical but it does help. Bing Keyword In Domain However Google does have a filter for exact match domain names. So it is best to use a domain that includes your keyword but isn’t an exact match. The only problem with that is… #8 – Page Authority Is More Important The other thing that you will notice when comparing Google and Bing results – Bing doesn’t place as much weight on backlinks! BUT: It does place weight on site authority. It is much harder to rank a new domain in Bing than it is in Google. Having an aged domain will give you an extra leg up across Bing’s results. So if you have an older domain that includes your keyword – you are golden! If you just have an older domain your still in a strong position. Where you don’t want to be is with a brand new domain. #9 – PageRank Is Irrelevant PageRank is a measurement of authority created in the early days of Google. It is not as relevant as it once was and hasn’t been updated for a long time now. However it is important to note: Google PageRank does not seem to have any correlation with Bing SEO rankings. #10 – Content & Keyword Density Is Important Bing prefers sites that have lots of unique quality content. They place much higher value on longer more engaging content than shorter content. You need to feed Bing the specific keyword you want your page to rank for. It is much better to focus on 1 page per keyword with Bing. But again be careful you don’t trip Google Panda by offering duplicate content. Bing also tries to eliminate duplicate content at the point of indexing. Redundant content is recognized and eliminated from search market result pages. But may still be available in the index. #11 – Site Structure & Code Is Important Bing offer a few interesting pieces of advice around your site structure and coding. First of all they advise that quality content should be organized close to the surface. In other words no content should be more than 3 clicks away from the homepage. You should also use a broad to specific structure flow. So you might go with: SEO > Link Building > Strategies or Garden > Furniture > Chairs This will keep Bing happy when it comes to the site structure ranking factor. #12 – General Onsite Optimisation Onsite optimization is similar for Bing SEO as it is to Google. You want to make sure you use: Meta title Description tags Exact match keyword. Bing places a lot of emphasis on title tags but keeps the user engagement signals in mind. You should only have one H1 tag per page to establish the main topic. Then use the H2 and H3 tags to talk about subtopics. It is also worth noting that sometimes Bing will swap out your meta description with your H1 tag in the search results so be creative with your headings. Don’t just rely on exact headings. #13 – HTTPS Is Not A Bing Ranking Factor Google recently announced that HTTPS is now used as a ranking signal. Although a very minor one. Bing Lead Program Manager Vincent Wehren said that HTTPs is not a ranking factor. They don’t want to mess around with rankings based on a factor that has no real relevance. How To Get Indexed In Bing Recently Bing announced that instead of sitting and waiting for your page to get crawled… You can actually submit your URL’s to its search engine for crawling and then indexing. In the announcement they stated: We believe that enabling this change will trigger a fundamental shift in the way that search engines, such as Bing, retrieve and are notified of new and updated content across the web. Bing So instead of 10 URL’s a day which was the previous allowance… You can now submit up to 10000! Let’s take a quick look at how you submit your URL’s. This is a very easy process – You need to use the ‘Submit URL’s’ feature that can be found within ‘Configure My Site’ section in the Webmaster Tools. Submit URL's To Bing Or alternatively, you can use the ‘Submit URL API’ method. Either way, using the new Bing submission tools means getting your sites indexed FAST. Bing Penalties We don’t know a whole lot about Bing’s penalties. What we do know for sure is they are a much friendlier beast than Google. There are certainly no crazy black and white animal updates to deal with here! The Bing SEO Spam Filter The Bing Index Quality team have published a few articles that are worth reading- Filtering Low Quality Links in Bing SERP Web Spam Filtering MGC Spam Filtering They show you actual case study examples with a lot of details about each update. It is very important that you stay on top of your outbound link profile. Make sure that you are only linking to clean and related sites as Bing will punish you for this seriously. Reciprocal linking will also get you in trouble. If you have experience with ranking sites in Google you will know to avoid that practice. Bing SEO spam detection methods are much further behind the times than Google’s. How To Check If You Have A Bing Penalty Bing makes it easy to see if your site has a penalty. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools. Click on the ‘Summary Tool’ then look at the ‘Site Status’ section – if it shows Blocked: Yes – your site has been penalised. If this is the case then take a look at this post to get out of the penalty box. Wrapping It Up I hope now you can take Bing SEO seriously! Check your own data and decide whether Bing SEO is worth it – It was for me! Did you know that nearly 10% of all searches are done with Bing? Billions of people are searching every month and you're ignoring them! CLICK TO TWEET You can use this part of the guide to optimize your site for Bing SEO. We covered: Why Bing SEO is valuable? Free tools & resources Bing ranking factors Bing penalties Now it’s over to you! Do you get any traffic from Bing and Yahoo at the moment? If you do – how does it perform compared to Google traffic? Frequently Asked Questions How do I increase my Bing ranking? If you want to increase your Bing ranking then you need to review the Bing ranking factors and ensure your website is optimized to those factors. Bing SEO Analyzer is a great tool which gives you a list of suggestions to improve. How is Bing different from Google? Bing and Google are different because they have similar ranking factors but they place a stronger reliance on different ones. Bing focus on user engagement and social signals whereas Google put a strong focus on backlinks. Optimizing for these factors will give you a boost in both search engines. How do I get Bing to index my website? To get your website indexed in Bing you can go to the Webmaster Tools, and within the ‘Configure My SIte’ section you can use the ‘Submit URLs’ feature. Add each URL (one per line) and click ‘SUBMIT’. You can add up to 10,000 a day! How do I improve my SEO on Bing? Like any SEO you need to understand what makes Bing tick. Find out what Bing looks for when ranking your website and then check your site against those guidelines and optimize accordingly. Previous Google Ranking Factors OR Next What Are Keywords? You Might Also Enjoy... Replace Every SEO Tool You Own With This Ninja Suite Of Tools How To Start A Blog THE RIGHT WAY In 2019 Step By Step The Best Free SEO Tools To Super Charge Your Search Rankings [2019] Share 52 Tweet 19 Share 71 SHARES 202 Responses priya iiadm This post is really helpful to increase website traffic and search engine ranking. Please post more posts like this Reply Matthew Woodward There’s plenty on its way Reply Ziaul Does blog comment matter? if I create for the backlink for my website. Reply Matthew Woodward See for yourself – https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/case-studies/comment-backlinks/ Reply Ojashospital Thanks for sharing informative blog keep up the good work. Reply Matthew Woodward I certainly intend to. Reply dranuragsharma Pretty impressed Post, Really it’s a very helpful post. Hope everybody will be benefited from your post Reply Matthew Woodward I hope so too. Reply dolar Very nice this post your blog Reply Matthew Woodward Cheers! Reply Agence web Tunisie Thanks for the sharing this blog with us Reply Matthew Woodward No problem :) Reply Ritesh Benjwal Happy to see this amazing features of Bing. Now onwards i also work for bing. Reply Matthew Woodward You should include Bing SEO in your SEO strategy for sure! Reply Eniola Akinduyo happy I checked my inbox. your post came at the right time. I will try this out and see how it goes. keep sharing keep inspiring Reply Matthew Woodward Let me know the results! Reply Shaun Ling This is superb! Haven’t v really paid attention to Hing. But something worth a try Reply Matthew Woodward Check your data and if it’s worth it then definitely include it in your SEO strategy. Reply Chris Thanks, once again Matthew for a very valuable article giving us so much useful information. Factors for ranking in Bing have always been a mystery to me. I will now be able to implement SEO for traffic from this source. Reply Matthew Woodward No problem Chris, you should definitely include these factors in your SEO strategy! Reply Scott This list is great! Just a heads up that the link to the Microsoft SEO Tool Kit doesn’t seem to work. Reply Matthew Woodward Updated thanks :) Reply Patrick Great resources as usual. Pls check, the Microsoft SEO Tool Kit returned error message Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks just fixed it up! Reply Rhonda Thank you for all the information about Bing! I had forgotten about Bing and this is a wonderful wake-up call back to Bing! Love it! Thank you! Reply Matthew Woodward I’m not saying focus on them, but they should be included :) Reply Ayodele Taiwo Thank you for your quality information. I have bookmarked this page. Reply Matthew Woodward No problem Reply Miss Nahdi WOW, Bing seems to be a lot cooler than Google. I never used Bing as a traffic source in my life before. But this post is compelling me to do so otherwise. Bookmarked this post and will now implement each and every step to start my Bing SEO journey. Wish me luck for a smooth sail. Thanks for sharing this useful info. Reply Matthew Woodward No problem, just make sure there part of your processes is all :) Reply Jamiu Oloyede Hey Matt, Thank you for writing this article. It came at the right time because just two days ago, I added my new site: https://groupleads.net to bing webmasters and since then I have not taken the time to complete the verification and other things. This article is quite enlightening and i’m encouraged to finish everything this morning. Oh before I forgot, I active saw your post on facebook and I follow it back here. Reply Matthew Woodward Yeah go through and do that, add your social profiles and see what happens :) Reply Kaycee Great piece. I recently submitted my site to Bing and it felt good. The focus is on Google. Watch any youtube video on SEO, it’s all about how to rank on Google. This post gave me some insight into the big Bing. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Kaycee, I’m still hoping ‘The Big Bing’ will catch on. Reply SEO Relation Awesome article Matt, I really enjoy reading this and it so useful content that every blogger should know for traffic generating. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks very much. Massive opportunity a lot of people are missing. Reply MDMASH THANK YOU VERY MUCH ADMIN!!! YOUR INFORMATION IS SO HELPFUL FOR ME… AS IM WORKING ON BING TRAFFIC. Reply Matthew Woodward Hey :) no problem, glad you found my post Reply Pandora Compatible Charms Your style is so unique compared to other folks I have read stuff from. Many thanks for posting when you have the opportunity, Guess I’ll just bookmark this page. Reply Matthew Woodward Yes I am one of a kind haha. Thanks for the bookmark, come back soon :) Reply fortnite free v bucks club Aw, this was a really nice post. Taking the time and actual effort to produce a top notch article… but what can I say… I hesitate a whole lot and never seem to get nearly anything done. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks for the feedback, work hard and you will move forward :) Reply Denae Hermawan Interesting information. Thank you. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Denae Reply Mark Stone Great article Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Mark Reply Jamila Thanks for the valuable insight! This is an informative, good quality article which is refreshing in the age of click-bait :) Reply Matthew Woodward Cheers Jamila Reply Andrew Stutzman So, in your opinion is it still easier to rank on big than google? Reply Matthew Woodward Yes for sure Reply Shuvo Really informative article. I have seen that ranking in Bing is pretty easier. Just number of backlinks matters. Reply Matthew Woodward Yes it’s generally easier Reply Jupiter I see this blog good quality and excellent. I earn good knowledge and skill. Reply Matthew Woodward I try to do that with every post :) Reply Quran Teaching I have been strugling with bing tools long time for my sites, even i didn’t got what is gooing on in bing tools rather than understanding bing factors. Google web master tools are way easier than bing and shows more clear effects of your recent work on website seo Reply Matthew Woodward Yeah I agree the interface on Bing Webmaster Tools is hard work Reply Sachin Lamba Bing is underrated in the seo world, i used to have an emd which was making $100 every month without any work. and yeah it got ranked after 3 days of registration. Reply Matthew Woodward Yeah its a great opportunity Reply True shades photography Hi…..Matthew I want to remove my spam score,my spam score is 8/17. I have submitted spam link file to google webmaster tool (Disavow) since 20 days ago but still the spam score is same. So plz do help me to reduce the spam score. Reply Matthew Woodward Where are you getting the spam score from? Reply thomaskutty thankachan I see this blog good quality and excellent. I earn good knowledge and skill. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks :) Reply Hariom balhara I love Duckduckgo Reply Matthew Woodward Quack whack! Reply Lawrence Slsko Your article is very relevant and important. initially we are aiming seriously at Google but when I realised that 20M+ people visit bing.com daily for search opportunities then I knew I need to target Bing and be a dominant in my niche on Tue search. thanks for your tips. Really great. Reply Matthew Woodward No problem Lawrence, I think Bing offers a great opportunity! Reply Matt Baier Such a help full article. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Matt! Reply Komal great post Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Komal! Reply Chandraprakash very nice Reply Matthew Woodward No problem :) Reply Brenda We all know that search engine is the best source to drive targeted traffic and customers. Right? Search engines like Google plays a major role in delivering potential customers and readers. To become a succeessful business man, We have must high traffic from Google but nowadays I have noticed that It is being harder and harder to get ranked in Google. Due to the rise of spammers, Google is improving their algorithms and removing spammers from their SERPs. The ranking factors which you have mentioned above are very much important and It can help us to get ranked better in SERPs. I only believe that We should must have indepth and detailed content which can help readers. If We have such types of content then We can easily drive huge organic traffic without making more efforts. I am glad that you have shared such a wonderful article with us. :D Reply Gaurav Does Domain Age matters for Bing?? Reply Matthew Woodward Yes it does help Reply C Price Does domain age influences on bing more or less than it does on google? Reply Matthew Woodward I don’t think there is much in it to be honest Reply SHC I have an old domain that I finally turned into a site and it’s already on page 1 in Bing results. It hasn’t even been 2 weeks, is this a beginner’s luck thing or because it’s an exact match domain that has been sitting there for a few years? Great article btw. I would think it makes sense that Bing is easier to rank than Google. Reply Matthew Woodward Bing likes EMD’s a little more than Google, but to put thing sin perspective for you – this blog ranks terribly in Bing :) Reply FC Copan Trust me ranking on bing is harder some time cause there are only some working methods. Reply Matthew Woodward I think it’s much easier than Google! Reply John I am very shocked that HTTPS is not a ranking factor for Bing, while Google is working. Thanks for sharing this point. Reply Matthew Woodward Well there are a bunch of differences :) Reply Robert thanks for sharing amazing article Mathew, it will help the beginners like me. Thank You. :) Reply Matthew Woodward No problem Robert :) Reply Sneha Thanks a lot for this very informative article however could you tell us why bing shows lessor pages in bing search than google even after submitting them the sitemap Reply Matthew Woodward How much time has passed? Reply Khaled Soliman Wow I didn’t know all that about Bing, but to be honest, most the time when we optimize a web page for any given keyword, we normally start ranking faster and better in Bing than we do in Google. It’s almost as if Bing ranks you without doing any SEO. Rankings in Google take forever and its 10X harder. Reply Matthew Woodward Perhaps you should offer bing seo as a service then :) Reply Sheraz Ahmad that greats news, at least it will finish the monopoly situation, when healthy competition comes in the market it will definitely help the users. however Bing needs to upgrade web master tools, especially the analytics area. Reply Matthew Woodward I hope so! Reply Nate Somsen Thanks for your amazing, informative article! Even though you lightly touched on Bing Webmaster Tool’s connected pages I find it a fantastic opportunity to insert all the social media pages associated with your website, thus drawing in additional attention to your website in search results. I never knew that Bing offers a Bing Authorship, I’m going to have to start implementing that! It is so ironic, I was actually thinking about Bing and their consideration of backlinks this morning and how much they actually weigh in on quantity and quality of backlinks. I will have to start looking for Bing Penalties, I assumed they didn’t penalize (at least at this stage of their growth as a search engine). Reply Tobias I love the image search on bing. Have you compared the image search on bing to google? :) Reply Matthew Woodward I haven’t actually Reply Jacob I have an estimatet 300 pages online – testing different SEO approaches. One thing all my black sites boostet with PBN’s has in common – are – They are top 3 in BING. BH definetly has a great impact on BING ratings. I track with authoritylabs – and same sites has rankings off 50+ in google. So for now I would say – “HIT” the spam buttom – if you just have smaller niche sites – which you will target BING users only. Reply Matthew Woodward Good information :) Reply jason Matthew: I have a couple of bing sites I want to rank. Are you currently taking on clients for this? It is something I want to do but just have not had time to get to. I would like to outsource if possible. Reply Matthew Woodward Yes please see https://www.searchlogistics.com/ Reply Wan Hi there, was just wondering for those who have commented on the increase of reach/clicks in Bing as compared to Google, since the default pages are only for North America, Belarussians, Kazakhstans, and Russians, is your target market these countries then? Does that explain the increase? Wan Reply Oscar Really intersting point. Bing traffic does convert and does make money but it is just a much smaller amount than Google brings. I think the new marketshare gained by the other SE is really significant. But I also know that I changed the default SE the moment I realized this had been changed. Most people don’t like when things like this are forced to them so I know many people will switch back immediately. I’m more concerned with all the new people switching to Firefox and not realizing it. This also makes me wonder… Didn’t Firefox make lots of money via Google partnerships etc? What is happening to that with these changes. Reply Matthew Woodward It’s not the size that matters, it’s what you do with it that counts. Reply Matthew Betourney Hope this doesn’t get posted twice; I had an issue with the first try. Anyways…. I have a few EMD sites that died on google about 3 years ago, but have consistently ranked on yahoo/bing for a very long time (and they still do.) They are decent volume keywords that I am ranking for, and they do generate consistent money (about 1/4 as much money as they generated when they ranked on page 1 of google, but its still decent.) Anyways, I noticed that EMD’s seem to get a really big advantage on Bing (not sure if this is the case with really high volume kewords though.) However, according to this post, you are at a serious disadvantage when using a new domain (even if EMD I’m guessing?) Heres the question: Do you think I would be better off buying an aged domain that didn’t have any of the keywords in the domain name? OR just buying a brand new EMD domain? I use spam tools like GSA Search Engine ranker etc… (which is how my existing older EMD sites rank… all of their keywords were just built with spammy SEO tools.) I’m leaning more towards just buying brand new EMD domains… cheaper too. After 2 or 3 months of spamming, the EMD domains that I bouth 2 or 3 months ago aren’t ranking very consistently. Sometimes the lower volume ones rank on page 1, but then they bounce to like page 5, or they dispensary completely for awhile. What is even more strange, is that sometimes my crappy auto generated subpages rank on page 1, even though the homepage is no where to be found (these rankings don’t last though.) If bing/yahoo hates autogenerated “dupe” content so much, then why do they cache all of my auto generated content pages so easily? Hell, I don’t even spin the content on my subpages; I just use WP Robot to generate it. My homepage IS quality content and is all hand written, unique content, and the onpage SEO is spot on. Also, my existing older sites that rank VERY well indeed have auto generated content for most of their subpages, so I’m pretty sure that the auto content subpages isn’t hurting anything :) The way my newer EMD’s are bouncing around reminds me a lot of the google dance bs. Tell me it isn’t so :) I think I spammed way too many exact achor links to them. I am now in the process of spreading out my anchor text more though. Hope that helps. I’m probably just over-paranoid; it is probably just a matter of time before the new sites rank well (well, at least the lower volume ones… not sure about the higher volume/competition ones.) Wow, that turned into a really long comment :) Again, what do you think? Am I wasting my time getting brand new EMD domains? Will it take a year+ to rank those, VS aged domains? Reply Matthew Woodward Great feedback =D To be honest I haven’t bothered with EMD domains for a long time now Reply Cara Hi Matthew, Great article and I was trying to access your Bing video (“Jump Start Your Bing SEO With This Free Video Training Course”) and after verifying my email address, it’s not listed as a resource. Could you help me here? I’m really interested in watching it. Thanks! Reply Cara Nevermind, I found it! Reply Matthew Woodward Haha don’t worry your weren’t the only one :P Reply John The chart is dramatic, but what does the chart for total market share look like today? Is Firefox 34 adoption moving total search engine market share significantly yet? Reply Matthew Woodward I’m going to give it a few weeks and see how it looks! Reply Jason Dea Great post, and very thorough. Bing has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Although our page ranks very well in Google I always found it odd that the Bing/Yahoo results were totally different (and generally worse). I’m going to go through your list of tips and see if I can figure some of this out. Interestingly we get more traffic from Duck Duck Go right now than we do Bing… Reply Matthew Woodward Oooo that is interesting, can’t say I have ever had any traffic from there so you must be doing something right Reply Sam I think it still needs a few months to see what actually happens on this search war. “Creating sites that users love” should be the ultimate goal for everyone on the IM world. Reply Matthew Woodward I’m not really one for waiting to see what happens, I’m going to put everything in place so if it does happen – I’m already there. Reply Deedee What…? Google have to pay to get traffic? Reply Matthew Woodward They did for the firefox default search bar Reply Brad Great article on Bing. Lots of folks overlook this great resource for traffic. Google may be at the head of the pack right now but there is still a lot of potential with Bing and folks are missing a lot of opportunity by dismissing Bing. Reply Matthew Woodward That is fine by me :) Most of my success in SEO is due to people dismissing things Reply Steven Hey Matt, Great post… I heard this was coming about a week ago and I was so happy because I hate google. I been using Bing for months after google robots kept busting my balls with their capcha… while trying to do research… Bing Banged Google square in the kisser I love it… this made my day…. Reply Matthew Woodward Who types captchas in manually anymore? It’s 2014 =D Reply Adam Hi Matt Nice post and appreciate the share. We are already spending a lot of time focusing on Bing, as a hedge against all the increased Panda/Penguin challenges I think the big one would be if/when Apple changes Safari to default to Bing like they have on Siri This is kinda a medium sized loss for Google. To put this change in perspective, Firefox has 13 percent roughly of desktop traffic. So if half of Firefox users become Yahoo searchers, this would move 6.5 percent of desktop search away from Google to Bing powered search. Significant, but not a giant game changer Firefox is not a player at all in the mobile market, and half of search now is mobile and growing. Google is default in Android search, which is majority of mobile market. Reply Joachim Hi Matthew, you really kick ass :-) This is the kind of clean and latest news information I totally love. To be honest, this “little” Firefox Update just hadn’t got through to me before reading your post. I, too, consider this to be an interesting shift in the SEO landscape and I appreciate more pressure to be wielded on Google. In my opinion, they rely on their almost monopoly status and focus on their ambition to dominate loads of different technology niches, way too much. In my eyes, the quality of the search results has diminished. When it comes to the quality of Bing traffic, I have made the exerience that Bind Ads in fact did not convert very well, but this is not true for the Bing organic traffic. Keep up the great work and stay tuned! Reply Matthew Woodward Well they are certainly getting leaned on by the European Union right now! Reply Future Buffalo Matt, Just had a conversation about Bing a few weeks ago where I made fun of its importance. I also knew of the Firefox & Yahoo deal but didn’t put it together! Am now furiously working on getting all of my client sites up to date for Bing search. Reply Jody I was just in Bing webmaster tools yesterday and was wondering what was up with the big jump in impressions from Bing all of a sudden. I thought it was something I had done. Thanks for the timely write-up. I pushed it over to reddit for you as a thanks ;). Reply Matthew Woodward Thats very kind of you thanks :) Reply Des Just wanted to thank you Matthew for the great content and value you add. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Des! Reply Amod I can confirm the news WITH PROOF Matt! I do a lot of bing ads, and yesterday my clicks were THREE TIMES more than EVER before! I am sure a direct result of more people on bing… Reply Matthew Woodward Hope you had those ad budgets under control =D Reply Miguel Hi Matt. I have also read a study where they say that Bing values ​​the “meta keywords” to filter spam! What do you think ? Reply Matthew Woodward Looking at search results it doesnt seem to be all that relevant Reply manish Bing Seo,thats amazing for me.Thanks mate Reply Matthew Woodward Good luck! Reply Colin Fox Hey Matthew, great post again. I’m loving this, although my site might be a tad new (8 months-ish), the domain isn’t (around 2 years old) – might affect things a bit? The one thing that really stands out for me is that you can actually contact Bing and get things sorted out, unlike the big G that seems to be a big brother type, concealing info and not wanting to help the little guys. Good news, in my book. Reply Matthew Woodward I think you would do alright with that! Reply nick Nice to see Bing getting the love! I’ve also noticed a big lift in Bing paid search volume on a client project I am working on. It now brings in over 20% of the PPC volume. It used to be more like 10%. It is definitely getting more market share. The traffic is cheaper and with half the CPA’s of Google. Quality is lower though. Organic wise, I still find it hit and miss but now I now the share is improving will pay more attention. Plus you get to see keyword data! Nick Reply Matthew Woodward Time to start spending on bing ads! No pesky quality score either :) Reply Gary Delighted for them. I like a few of the commentators above have sites that rank very well in Bing but do piss poor in Google despite trying everything in the book. So do you thing this will hamper all the plans for big authority domains that people have been harping on about if they can now get just enough traffic from Bing / Yahoo with crap sites instead. Is it worth the effort?? Gaz Reply Matthew Woodward Well it depends how you look at it, traffic is traffic! Reply Erik Emanuelli Fantastic news, Matt. And informative post. I recently submitted my sites to Bing, just few weeks ago… Finally the revenge against Google is coming. I am on the side of David. Will he defeat Goliath completely? Reply Matthew Woodward Stranger things have happened in the world! Reply ChrisG I think you just made my day! : ) Reply Matthew Woodward No problem :) Reply Tim Thanks for the awesome post Matt! I’ve definitely been dragging my feet with Bing, although I do I have a Web Master account setup at least :-) Still, time to start taking it a little more seriously I think! Reply Matthew Woodward Did you submit your sitemaps at least :P Reply Can i be Frank? Bing is eeeasy to rank on. On page all done properly and PBN links will shoot you to pos 1 on Bing in no time. Reply Matthew Woodward Bish bash bosh =D Reply Panagiotis Kontogannis If the above statistics is true (bing+yahoo have 35% of US market) that shows that perhaps the time has come to change leader google from his throne. In Russia, yandex is dominated, and in China is baidu, so for google remains only European market where there is no competition unfortunately. Reply Matthew Woodward Except for the European Union Reply Quratulain Great post, and the move by FireFox is hardly surprising. I am one of those crazy people who manually sets Bing as their default search engine in browsers. Yes I know! My reasons for the switch are mostly because when I want to research something or really look for it on the web, I need a search engine that hasn’t been gamed by SEOs to appear high in search rankings. Interestingly, since the beginning of 2013 (when i switched my search engine to Bing) I see more relevant results in Bing than Google which is why I dumped it (google has improved btw…but still not enough). With Google I would click on links that appeared to have answers only to be fooled into looking at a completely non relevant page or worse have nothing of the sort anywhere on the page. It was truly frustrating. Anyhow, now I only use Google, if I cannot find on Bing which is probably only 10% of the time. Even then Google is mostly unable to help so its a wasted trip anyway. Reply Matthew Woodward Very interesting – it’s a switch I’ve considered as Bing results are generally better but change and all that :P Reply Suneel Awesome writeup Matt. Never thought Bing would surface like this. BTW voted for your article on GrowthHackers. Thanks. Reply Matthew Woodward Very kind of you thank! Reply Toko Mebel Jati Very nice this post your blog Reply Matthew Woodward Very comment on this blog of my post. Reply Oloyede Jamiu Hi Matt, Thanks for the update about Bing SEO. No doubt that i saw an increase in traffic to my blog through YAHOO/BING. Everyone is surprised because everyone have been focusing on Google and their update. I have learned a lot from this. Take care and have a nice day ahead. -Oloyede Jamiu Reply Matthew Woodward Following the crowd sucks anyway :P Reply Ashish Nagwanshi Hi Matthew, When it comes to search traffic, i never considered Yahoo and Bing. I am even not sure whether my blog is properly submitted to Bing and Yahoo or not. After reading this Big Bing theory, i am going to make sure that i am on every search engine. Regards, Reply Matthew Woodward Better be getting your hustle on then =D Reply itos But can’t the users of Firefox just change the default search engine to Google. Like when people using internet explorer goes from Bing to Google. Reply Matthew Woodward Yes they can change back, but the key thing is its now changed by default. Reply Petar Sabados Agree with Matthew, there are a lot of users who don’t bother changing the default search engine. If they search for a few things and those searches give them the results they were after, they are more likely to continue just using that default. Hence this really is a HUGE thing for BING. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google saw a huge hit to its revenue from this as well. Reply itos I am glad that this happened. So the search engine traffic starts to spread a little more. We can’t just depend on Google. Reply Donna Alright! A new playground. LOL Even if it drops a little, there’s still money to be made. I updated but Google was still the default se. I like that Bing is more transparent. “The Big Bing” is really cute! Reply Matthew Woodward I love new playgrounds =D Reply Alistair Cochrane But this is only a change in Firefox users. And Firefox has been steadily losing popularity over the years as Chrome and mobile increased. I just saw a stat that said 24% use Firefox and it’s 25% on my blog. I’d say Google let this go because they don’t see it as important long term. Or at least not important enough to outbid Yahoo. My back of the fag packet calculations say… at the very most a 6 point swing for Bing overall assuming all Firefox users accept the change… which they won’t. I’d say we are more likely to see a further fall in Firefox popularity and at best Bing/yahoo gets a boost of a couple of points. Bing and yahoo combined already had just under 30% market share in the US and this change should get them above 30%, but it’s an incremental change i think not a revolution. Perhaps a bigger threat to Google might be how well Windows 10 works out as a mobile operating system. Reply Matthew Woodward True and there is always going to a browser war but underneath all of this is the point that when change comes, it comes – we need to be ready! Reply Simon Voted and shared. Great, thought provoking read. Their BWT while similar in concept to GWT offers a wealth of useful info. I wish GWT would sit up and take note. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Simon! Reply Delwar Thanks for the great insights. I have also noticed the bump and fall recently. May be Mozilla is gaining more power against the Chrome. Mozilla now can suggest which search engine I intend to use. And, when it comes to organic traffic does it matter either it is from Google or Bing? All that should matter is what they were looking for. So, bing results and conversions are also as important as Google’s. Thanks for clearing that part too. Reply Matthew Woodward No problem :) Reply wahyu awaludin Seriously, Matt? Bing SEO?? mind-blowing.. Reply Matthew Woodward Enjoy :) Reply kid matt i am a silent reader of your blog and your blog is one my fav. Sadly i opted in to get to the Bing SEO training course but i was not redirected to any bing related course.. Reply Matthew Woodward Just follow the page to the subscriber resources Reply Ahmed Amin You said user engagement was important, that if less people clicked the back button you would rank higher. Do you think it could be possible to have multiple ips go to your site from bing (so that the percentage of people who stayed on the page would go up) and make yourself rank higher? Reply Matthew Woodward Try it and find out ;) Reply Ryan The Big Bing! Nice one Matt. Great analysis on your Google Analytics. Im sure the volume isn’t the same as Google, but Bing certainly can provide quality. Reply Matthew Woodward Thanks Ryan :) Reply David Wallace Thanks for this Matt, such brilliant information that I have just been and signed up for Bing webmaster tools and submitted my site etc. None of which I had bothered to do before, great stuff! Reply Matthew Woodward Tut tut :P Reply Daniel Daines-Hutt HA the Big Bing Theory ;) Those are some crazy numbers for Google to drop by. They have to be doing something to pull that around because it has to have a monetary effect on them surely? Perhaps Google will buy firefox? ….stranger things have happened Will be looking forward to your video info on the subject Dan Great write up Matt, just saw this over on inbound also Reply Matthew Woodward I’m pretty sure there stock price is going to drop in the next financial quarter! Reply Phil Johnson That is a crazy amount of change for 24 hours. More than I thought it would be when I heard about it as I thought that Chrome had more browser market share these days. Personally, I like Bing traffic and have found it easier to get ranked (even with new domains) than the Big G. It’ll be interesting to see if they get power hungry as their market share grows. Reply Matthew Woodward Yeah it is massive, imagine what that will look like long term! Reply antoine Wahou amazing article. I’m gonna prepare myself for the french big bing . Such a great opportunity ! Reply Matthew Woodward It is indeed :) Reply Zac Johnson I like your “Big Bing Theory” :P Always good to see a big player like FireFox mix things up… wonder how their compensation model has changed, or what Yahoo/Bing paid for the change to take place. Firefox was making $300 million a year off it’s deal with Google. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-is-google-funding-its-own-competition-in-the-firefox-os/ Reply Matthew Woodward Hahaha then please help it catch on :P Only $300 million? Heck I’m going to get them to change the default search to this blog! Reply Joe Great article Matt as always. Matt having never really looked at Bing in the past, I see one of my small sites which now days is nowhere in Google is position 1 and 2 for the EMD. Is there a tool to check the monthly traffic for the keyword along with the PPC ? Kind regards Joe Reply Matthew Woodward Hey, Yes it’s all within Bing Webmaster Tools Reply Liudas Whoa that’s a huge difference in US searches. How did Google let this slip, I think they were supporting Mozilla for years :D Anyway, competition is definitely good for us, because one day by getting penalized by Google we might not lose our entire business…one day… Reply Matthew Woodward Yeah it’s a huge drop for Google! Reply Johnny I love your quality content, good thing you bring to the community these changes on Bing. So I can get ahead of my competitors in Latin America, I have little following your blog and it is more advanced than I have seen. In the Latin market there is nothing similar to your information, Latinos gurus always all the information for themselves are saved, they are too selfish, sorry for my English, I understand 80% and I’m using the google translator. Thank you for your golden information, I’m getting ahead than all my competitors thanks to you :) Now I will focus on all search engines :) Greetings from the Mexican Pacific Coast. Johnny Reply Matthew Woodward Hey, Well I’m pretty sure a lot of my readers use Firefox so they should have spotted it :P Hablas ingles muy bien, pero mi espanol is no bueno mas de tiempo! Reply Randy Puaatuua That’s funny, when my sites got slapped years ago from Google my Bing traffic remained steady-ish. In fact, to this day Google rarely sends traffic and it all comes from Bing. A couple of my sites rank really well, some 1st SERP for some keywords and this is all with the Good Old Days of Over Optimization. Reply Matthew Woodward I have had exactly the same experience :) Reply Manu Wow great post Matt, thanks for the work. If you had to describe Google and Bing with one concept or idea (I mean just one or two words) what would they be? “Search Engine” is cheating :D I mean something like Google: Links, Bing: Authority. Reply Matthew Woodward Hmmm well wait for next weeks post on Googles new signal ;) Reply Walt Who would have thought this day would come. I’m thinking that duckduckgo is soon to follow Reply Matthew Woodward Its more than possible in this crazy world! Reply Anant Mundhra And I m really wait some another search engine to beat Google. It;s gonna be a fun :) Reply Matthew Woodward Haha, anythings possible! Reply What are your thoughts? Your Comment* Your Name* Your Email* Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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