You may have heard that Microsoft's Bing is now powering Yahoo's search engine results. Together these two search engines now own 25% of the market share, with Google still holding a huge lead at just above 70% market share. While there is no question that an SEO strategy focused mostly on Google optimization is a good thing, one has to admit that 25% is nothing to sneeze at, and some additional attention should be paid to optimization for the Bing engine.
If your law firm has been optimizing its website mostly for Google don't worry – the good news is that many of the factors Bing cares about in determining page quality and SEO scoring are the same things that Google cares about. So, if you've been working to optimize your site for Google then your site is probably in good condition to do relatively well in Bing scoring too. There are, however, some things you should know about Bing and the things that matter to it. Some changes in your SEO strategy may be needed.
1. URL Optimization
Search engine/human-friendly urls are important to Bing. Like Google, Bing likes to see URLs with keywords in them, for example: http://saturnodesign.com/Website-Design-Development
While this may seem obvious, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, using a friendly URL like this only helps if you choose the correct keywords to put into the URL – words your target audience would actually use in order to search for the information your page offers. Second, the keywords in your URL need to match the content on the page, in the page title, heading, and in the body content itself. Lastly, your website technology needs to offer friendly URLs using the correct methods – the method that search engines prefer. If the wrong methods are used the friendly URLs will not be effective.
2. Metadata
Bing cares about metadata (keywords, descriptions, etc.) much more than Google currently does. Many firms have decided to spend less time on meta-tagging in recent years because Google pays little attention to the tags. Now that Bing powers 25% of search engine result, the tags deserve a little more attention.
It's important to remember that meta tags need to match the page content well. Meta keywords and descriptions should share the same keywords, and page headings and body content also need to contain those keywords.
3. Inbound Links and Outbound Links from Diverse Domains
Inbound links have been ranked as one of the highest valued SEO factors for Google for quite some time. But Bing also pays more attention to outbound links as well. Both Google and Bing are interested in seeing these links to and from a wide selection of domains – the more domains the better. Also bear in mind that these in/outbound links need to be from/to relevant web pages – pages the contain content about the same subjects as your web page.
4. Big Sites with Fresh Content
While fresh content is good for SEO everywhere, site size (in terms of page count) hadn't been directly tied to search engine results until the recent analysis of Bing's search results. It appears that Bing places value on website size.
This is bad news for law firms who have not built up online libraries of topical content with articles, alerts, news, etc. Firms who have invested in quality content production, and who maintain that production, will benefit.
5. Add an XML Sitemap
For some time Google has offered webmaster tools that allow a website's owner to submit XML sitemaps directly to Google. Many do not know, however, that Bing provides the same service.
Sitemaps help Bing to completely index a website, and can expose Bing to content it may not have indexed in previous scans. Sitemaps are not 100% necessary for good SEO results, but sitemaps can help avoid incomplete indexing caused by mistakes or issues with your website you may not be aware of.
After you create a sitemap, you can submit it to Bing here http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
6. Domain Age
The older your domain the better chance you have to achieve high page positions on Bing. While there isn't anything you can do about the age of your website's domain name, you can remember that domain age is important, and avoid changing or adding new domain names.
You may slow want to consider how to implement mini-sites. Is may be better to launch mini-sites under your existing domain name than to register a brand new domain name.
More information about Bing SEO best practices can be found many places (just search http://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+SEO+best+practices+&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-0), or directly from the source at Bing's webmasters site http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/
New to SEO and want to learn more?
Visit Saturno's SEO definitions website at www.lawfirm-seo.net