MSN Optimization – Go for the Bing

Most SEO’s focus too much on optimizing for Google only. A few expand and optimize for Yahoo – although with Yahoo’s diminishing emphasis on search, fewer webmasters find it worth their time. However, there is a search engine that every one should be optimizing for.

Bing is MSN’ newest search engine, it is actually one of the top three search engines and it can send a considerable amount of traffic to your website. MSN has been constantly trying to increase market share and we are starting to see subtle advertising on TV shows with characters using Bing to search as well as full commercials showing how Bing is a great engine to use.

It appears that Bing tends to value pages that are highly focused, so each page on your site should have a topic of its own and the site’s content should be structured around one topic. (In other words, if your site is rambling and covers many varied interests, it may not rank well on Bing.)  MSN also appears to give a lot of importance to keyword density (Which kind of is the same focus – if you have too many different topics of interest on the same page, the keyword density will be diluted. Same goes for your site, if many of your keywords are widely unrelated,  the search engine will not be able to discern which is the main area of interest of your website.) This means you really need a site structure that concentrates on a single topic per page.

Bing also dislikes pages that are heavily loaded with graphics. Apparently the reason for this is that the page is then increased beyond optimal size. (It is preferable to have web pages under 150 KB not including the images.) MSN cannot read image files, and an all Flash site will sink you on Bing. You must include all the important content of your website as HTML text to gain relevance for the keywords that are most important to your website.

Bing prefers static links for web pages. Plan on a minimum of one static link for users and search engine spiders to gain entry into your website. MSN also wants a sitemap included for your website but unlike Google, the sitemap only needs to be a regular HTML page with the structural linking of all the pages in your website. This helps Bing index all the pages of your website. The spider does not always drill down completely into navigation menu, so the site map ensure that important pages are not skipped.

Another interesting note is that MSN  recommends that all your web pages be accessible in three clicks. Deep, deep pages are at risk of being overlooked or devalued.

These SEO tips for Bing should help you begin to rank well for Bing searches and allow Bing users to find you more easily.