What does this mean for businesses? Batra says marketing on Bing involves tagging key phrases and URLs, rather than individual words. If you are a retailer, she says, the right keywords could push your product right to the top of Bing’s results.
“Bing puts an emphasis on URLs and tags, key phrases, rather than the individual words that Google uses. This means businesses have to pay attention to the way which they tag certain pages, because it’s different to Google.”
For example, searching for “SmartCompany” in Google would bring up pages with the exact word “SmartCompany”. However, when Bing searches for “SmartCompany”, it examines all related links, URLs and phrases coming in and out of a site to determine which results are the most relevant.
Additionally, Bing will only display one search result if it is certain it knows what you are looking for. A search for “Facebook” will only bring up Facebook.com – not 10 other related sites. So if businesses want to have their page show up alongside rivals, they need to do some work improving their website, making it more relevant.
Bing also lets users see a preview of the site they are about to visit, allowing them to determine whether or not the site is worth their time. Your site may rank highly on Bing, but unless your content isn’t concise and relevant, you may not even get a click.
Just knowing about Bing isn’t enough. If you want to gain more exposure, and even sales, from Microsoft’s new venture, then you need to get on board and add Bing to your SEO strategy.
But Stewart says businesses should take their time. Firstly, entrepreneurs should use the Bing’s web tools analytics kit to determine how their business ranks compared with Google.
By comparing results, Stewart says businesses can determine what will work on one search engine, and what must be marketed differently on another. The way both engines work won’t be clear unless the results are seen alongside each other, he says.
“If you’re using Google web master tools and Bing master tools, you may see different things happening in each and that will inform your ranking in Bing.”
“We’re constantly monitoring the traffic from Bing against sites that rank highly in Google, to see whether you rank the same in Bing. We just keep an eye on the traffic, and that’s what business should do – just keep observing before doing anything.”
Batra says URLs and keywords play a big part in Bing’s algorithm, so don’t just assume that what works on one engine will work on another.
Thomas says businesses need to treat SEO like any other venture – see what others do first before you do it yourself.
“My advice is to start looking at some of the SEO forums (SEO Chat Forums, High Rankings, Digital Point) and see what people are using, because each search engine, not just Bing and Google, are quite different and each requires a unique approach.”
“You don’t want to do anything in the dark, so try and find someone who has tried it. Get into these communities and ask them questions about what might work and what doesn’t, so you have an idea of what to expect. You don’t want to try something that has already failed before.”
Finally, the last step is to simply have a go. Set out a clear, small budget for Bing advertisements and monitor it daily.
“But it’s important to remember not to go all out straight away,” Stewart says. “I don’t have a specific figure for how much you should be spending on Bing, but it should make sense based on the traffic you’re getting from it. I’d be very wary of over-doing your advertising, so make sure you have a fixed, daily budget.”
Batra says taking out a few small text advertisements on Bing is a good idea, simply to judge whether sales will increase. If not, she says, only a small amount of money has been wasted, and you’ve saved yourself and your business a painful lesson by not going all out.
“Even if Bing’s market share is low, the average price per click will be lower and you might not get much volume, but you could get a lot of sales. Just try it and see.”
While Bing’s success has been good for its size, it is still only two months old and it will be a long time before it can be hailed as an alternative to Google.
For now, however, it remains a useful tool to gauge how well you are using SEO and could even open up some new revenue streams if you are targetting the correct markets. Certainly, these experts say, Bing isn’t going to disappear any time soon.
“I think I can put money on and say it will not go down, I think it’ll go forward. They really have a part now and they have something,” Batra says.
“I think it’s gone beyond the novelty factor of just giving it a try, it has passed that test of being able to give a relevant search result and be in competition with Google, and I definitely think the fact people are using it is because they’re getting what the want.”
Stewart says there is still a long way to go before Bing becomes a credible threat, but until then, all businesses can do is “wait and see…the proof in the pudding is the user base.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
