SEO for the Search Engines

I think most of us will find our rankings vary on Bing and Google although personally they have come more in line over recent months. Regarding on-page factors, research was carried out in the USA which concluded that the on-page changes users make don't really boost positions in either Google or Bing. Instead, both engines place more weight on exact match domains and the variety of domains that users have inbound links from. A good rule of thumb is to have many inbound links coming from a variety of domains, as opposed to having lots of links coming from a single domain. Bing’s webmaster tools has a tool that places value on inbound links. This helps us to understand what type of links Bing values the most. Google has far more usage data built up over the years & a huge market share advantage over Bing in literally every global market. Microsoft's poor branding in search meant they had really no leverage in the marketplace until they launched the Bing brand. That head start also means that Google has been working on understanding word meanings and adjusting their vocabulary far longer, which also gives them the confidence to be able to use word relationships more aggressively. The last big difference from an interface perspective would be that Google forces searchers down certain paths with their Google Instant search suggestions. This poses extra issues for us all to contend with. I think most of us would agree we all focus on Google to deliver our natural and PPC returns, however Bing is catching up so maybe a look in that direction wouldn't go amiss.

I’ve only used it out our curiosity so cannot recommend or comment on it, but there is a web tool called “Bingle” that allows you to compare search results for a term side by side - which is very interesting!