As the smoke clears and the newness wears off, Microsoft’s revamped search engine Bing is starting to rub off on me…..I know, I know, I’m eating my words from Friday’s post. I have to admit, the simplified search function helps in my personal life, but what implications does that have with regards to link building?
Bing, the ‘decision engine’, is designed to create an easier experience for searchers by providing you with more detailed and precise search
results. A one word search, such as
"truck", yields basically three results each for: what "it" is, who produces "it", variations of "it", prices for "it", reviews for "it", images of "it", videos of "it", and locations to find "it".
What does this simplification mean for link builders? The end of eccomerce and first page listings for small businesses? I wouldn’t go that far, but in time I imagine we will be seeing less and less small businesses in the top listings, and more of an emphasis on large brands dominating search results. All of this is assuming that Microsoft’s $100 million advertising plan works, and we all start using Bing more than Google. Without that, Bing is simply just another Live – unpopular and unused.
So what is a small or large site to do in preparation, besides looking at the usual
webmaster tools? Well for starters, take a look at your meta titles, keywords, and descriptions. Are you trying to ‘crowd’ your homepage with too many keywords? It may be time to revamp your site and reorganize the keywords associated with each of your landing pages. If you are trying to target too many keywords to one page, then presumably search engines with detailed search, like Bing, will have a harder time determining what your page is really about.
This concept is nothing new, but one has to draw the conclusion that when search engines get more detailed about results it means they’re looking for even more details than before. With the previous example search term "truck" the site owner could possibly include a page that hits each and every one of the categorical results that show up for the term "truck". Dedicate a page to answering: what "it" is, who produces "it", variations of "it", prices for "it", reviews for "it", images of "it", videos of "it", and locations to find "it".
Bing still has a ways to go to compete with Google’s market share, but with events like Hulu’s Bing-a-thon and creative commercials it may be sooner than we all thought!
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
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A few weeks ago, 
As competition relates to Google, up to now they’ve had only a few 
and innovative search solutions.
