Bing is the sleeping giant of the SEO world.
By the end of 2021, Bing had 7.2% of the search engine market share!
And it doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon.
The platform has been growing and continues to grow all around the world-
(I call this moment the “Bing Bang”. It never caught on. But I’m still trying!)
This small but significant shift in power has created a new opportunity for SEOs.
So I’m going to show you how to take advantage of that change with my Bing SEO guide.
What Will I Learn?
Many site owners feel mobile and desktop searches on Bing and Yahoo are not as valuable as searches on Google.
I’m not sure why this would be the case. They’re still people, right?
In my experience, they are just as valuable and even surpass Google.
I decided to dig into my own data.
Here’s what I found:
The data tells me everything I need to know.
Incoming traffic has:
Check your own data before passing judgement though!
The best thing about change is – people hate change.
Change pushes people out of their comfort zones and humans are wired to avoid that.
So for those willing to evolve with change there is a great opportunity here.
Since 1998 SEOs have purely focused on ranking sites in Google.
Because Google has the search market share, in turn results are highly competitive.
In that time Bing has been largely ignored.
And SEOs write off trying to improve their rankings by saying…
“If you rank well in Google you’ll also rank well in Bing”.
But is that the case?
Well… not quite:
Their algorithms are remarkably different.
Just compare results for the same term and you will quickly see what I mean.
It’s important to understand those key differences to take advantage of ‘The Big Bing’
(it will catch on).
Unlike Google, Bing are SEO friendly.
They offer a range of free diagnostics and SEO tools to help you understand and use their algorithm and it would be a good idea to take advantage of them.
Reading the Bing Webmaster Guidelines is the quickest way to get yourself up to speed.
You will learn all the dos and don’ts of off-page and on-page SEO for Bing.
It’s not as long/complicated as Google’s guidelines so won’t take you long to read.
The Bing Webmaster Tools are superb!
If you haven’t got your site set up with their Webmaster Tools yet, do it now.
It provides an awesome suite of webmaster tools including a backlink explorer!
You can also see exactly…
As of right now you will also get $100 of free Bing ads credit to play with – sweet!
Pay attention to Bing Webmaster Tools to assist you with your SEO strategy.
The Bing Website SEO Analyzer is also a great tool to discover…
…especially if your pages are following Bing’s SEO best practices.
Just enter your URL into the SEO Analyzer and it will return a list of suggestions to improve your rankings.
More of an unknown tool the free Microsoft SEO Tool Kit
This is a desktop application that spiders your website to find SEO problems.
It is very easy to use and well – it is 100% free so what is not to like!
Just like Google there is also a Bing Webmasters Blog
You should have a read through & subscribe.
Some of the posts are actually quite entertaining and often have some golden nuggets!
Imagine if Matt Cutts and the Google search quality/anti-spam team published a blog
Imagine if on that blog they shared what they’ve been trying & testing.
Well Bing do exactly that!
Their Search Quality Blog offers SEO best practices and some amazing insights into the world of search.
Last but not least.
Perhaps one of the best tools…
Is the ability to contact the Bing webmaster team.
So if your site does have problems or gets hit for any reason.
You can easily get in touch with the team directly to work things out.
Not a bad set of internet marketing tools.
PRO TIPS: Make sure to use the Bingbot to optimize your SEO results.
So what makes Bing tick at its core?
Here’s a list of the most important SEO best practices to optimize your website.
Let’s take a closer look at each of those points-
One of the strongest signals in Bing is user-engagement.
They measure this through a term known as ‘pogo sticking’ which is when someone performs a search, clicks on a result and then clicks back to return to the search results.
So similar to bounce rate but if lots of people visit your site from the search results and click the ‘back’ button –
This is a clear indication of a poor user experience.
However if lots of people visit your site from the search results and do not go back to them to continue searching – This is a very very strong signal.
Bing also measures click-through rates from its search results pages.
They use that data combined with the user experience data above to improve its conversion rate results.
For example: (all things being equal)
If the #1 position gets a 20% click-through rate.
But
The #2 position gets 40% –
This is a clear indication that the #2 result is more relevant.
This means you have to write your titles and descriptions with humans in mind.
But you also need to be specific with your target keywords. Think keyword based click bait.
There is a lot of debate on whether social media signals impact Google’s search rankings.
I can categorically tell you with 100% certainty – that they do.
I’ve been using social media schemes to rank in the search listings consistently for the past 2 years.
I revealed exactly how at a recent conference.
Don’t get caught up in the change debate just make sure social signals are part of your social media SEO strategy now. They affect your rankings in both Bing AND Google.
But this search engine has a much stronger reliance on social signals than Google.
You should use the power of social media to your advantage and you will see benefits in both search engines.
Google famously introduced (and then killed) Authorship allowing people to claim content they have written.
This meant Google Analytics could determine who are the true experts in any given industry. Granted they have killed Authorship for now (but are still tracking who is who via entities & schema data).
Bing also had it’s own version Authorship after they integrated Klout verified snapshots.
But Klout is now dead as well.
So instead you should take advantage of the connected pages feature powered by Bing-
Get started by adding all of your profiles and hit the verify button.
Easy!
Links aren’t held in such high regard as they are by Google.
But, they’re still playing a role in Bing’s SEO strategy.
To quote a recent article from Search Engine Land:
“A Microsoft spokesperson from Bing told us, “There are a variety of factors that come into play with ranking signals, links being one of them.” They also explained that links are still a very important ranking signal, and they don’t see that changing any time soon.”
I’d recommend that you continue to build links to your site but avoiding spammy link schemes, link farms and obvious link manipulation.
It will help you on the majority of search engines including Yahoo and Bing.
But pay close attention to Bing’s movements over the next few years.
Bing places more emphasis on the anchor text usage than Google does.
If you want to rank for ‘Blue Widgets’ you need links that use ‘Blue Widgets’ as the anchor.
They aren’t as good as Google at keyword matching. While Google does well with recognizing synonyms and context around a keyword, Bing needs spoon-feeding.
The risk here is that over optimising your anchor text will trip the Google Penguin filter.
So the trick here is…
Make sure that the link count coming from high authority sites focus on exact match anchor text!
While the others use a mix of anchor terms.
That will allow you to rank in Bing while dodging Google Penguin.
Having your target keyword in your domain name will help you to rank easier.
It isn’t critical but target keywords do help.
However Google does have a filter for exact match domain names.
So it is best to use a domain that includes your keyword but isn’t exact match keywords.
The only problem with that is…
The other thing that you will notice when comparing Google and Bing results – Bing doesn’t place as much weight on backlinks!
BUT: It does place weight on site authority.
It is much harder to rank a new domain in Bing than it is in Google. Domain age matters!
Having an aged domain will give you an extra leg up across Bing’s results.
So if you have an older domain that includes your keyword – you are golden!
If you just have an older domain your still in a strong position.
Where you don’t want to be is with a brand new domain.
PageRank is a measurement of authority created in the early days of Google. It is not as relevant as it once was and hasn’t been updated for a long time now.
However it is important to note:
Google PageRank does not seem to have any correlation with Bing rankings.
Bing prefers sites that have lots of unique content which is also of good content quality.
They place a much higher value on longer more engaging content than shorter content and their image search beats other search engines.
You need to use Bing with specific search terms you want your page to rank for.
It is much better to focus on 1 page per keyword.
But again be careful you don’t trip Google Panda by offering duplicate content and keyword stuffing.
They also tries to eliminate duplicate content at the point of indexing. Redundant content is recognized and eliminated from search market result pages.
But may still be available in the index.
Bing offer a few interesting pieces of advice around your site structure and coding.
First of all, they advise that quality content should be organized close to the surface. In other words, no content Bing views, should be more than 3 clicks away from the home page.
You should also use a broad to specific structure flow. So you might go with:
Onsite optimization is similar for Bing’s search algorithm as it is to Google.
You want to ensure you use:
They place a lot of emphasis on title tags but keeps the user-engagement signals in mind. You should only have one H1 tag per page to establish the main topic.
Then use the H2 and H3 tags to talk about subtopics.
It is also worth noting that sometimes Bing will swap out your meta description with your H1 tag in the search results so be creative with your headings.
Don’t just rely on exact headings.
Google recently announced that HTTPS is now used as a ranking signal.
Although a very minor one.
Bing Lead Program Manager Vincent Wehren said that HTTPs is not a ranking factor. They don’t want to mess around with rankings based on a factor that has no real relevance.
(Check out my complete SEO checklist for 2025).
Recently they announced that instead of sitting and waiting for your page to get crawled…
You can actually submit your URL’s to its search engine for crawl control and then indexing.
In the announcement they stated:
We believe that enabling this change will trigger a fundamental shift in the way that search engines, such as Bing, retrieve and are notified of new and updated content across the web.
BingSo instead of 10 URL’s a day which was the previous crawl rate…
You can now submit up to 10000!
Let’s take a quick look at how you submit your URL’s.
This is a very easy process – get started by using the ‘Submit URL’s’ feature that can be found within ‘Configure My Site’ section in the Webmaster Tools.
Or alternatively, you can use the ‘Submit URL API’ method.
Either way, using the new submission tools means getting your sites indexed FAST.
We don’t know a whole lot about Bing’s penalties.
What we do know for sure is they are a much friendlier beast than Google.
There are certainly no crazy black and white animal updates to deal with here!
The Bing Index Quality team have published a few articles on the Bing Webmaster blog that are worth reading-
They show you actual case study examples with a lot of details about each update.
It is very important that you stay on top of your outbound link profile. Make sure that you are only linking to clean and related sites as Bing will punish you for this seriously.
Reciprocal linking will also get you in trouble.
If you have experience with ranking sites in Google you will know to avoid those SEO practices.
Spam detection methods are much further behind the times than Google’s.
Bing makes it easy to see if your site has a penalty. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Click on the ‘Summary Tool’ then look at the ‘Site Status’ section – if it shows Blocked:
Yes – your site has been penalised.
If this is the case then take a look at this post from Bing Webmaster to get out of the penalty box.
Now you can take Bing seriously and check if it should be part of your marketing strategy!
Check your own data, review your traffic source and decide whether the search engine is worth it – It was for me!
(If you’re looking for SEO tools to check/monitor your Bing rankings, take a look at my list of the best Bing rank tracker tools).
You can use this part of the guide to optimize your site for Bing traffic if a chunk of your target market use Bing.
We covered:
Now it’s over to you!
Do you get any traffic from Bing’s search engine and the Yahoo search engine at the moment? If you do – how does it perform compared to Google traffic?
Let me know in the comments below along with your name and email address.
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Hi Matthew, Great article and I was trying to access your Bing video (“Jump Start Your Bing SEO With This Free Video Training Course”) and after verifying my email address, it’s not listed as a resource. Could you help me here? I’m really interested in watching it. Thanks!
Nevermind, I found it!
The chart is dramatic, but what does the chart for total market share look like today? Is Firefox 34 adoption moving total search engine market share significantly yet?
I’m going to give it a few weeks and see how it looks!
I am glad that this happened. So the search engine traffic starts to spread a little more. We can’t just depend on Google.
Great post, and very thorough. Bing has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Although our page ranks very well in Google I always found it odd that the Bing/Yahoo results were totally different (and generally worse). I’m going to go through your list of tips and see if I can figure some of this out. Interestingly we get more traffic from Duck Duck Go right now than we do Bing…
Oooo that is interesting, can’t say I have ever had any traffic from there so you must be doing something right
I think it still needs a few months to see what actually happens on this search war. “Creating sites that users love” should be the ultimate goal for everyone on the IM world.
I’m not really one for waiting to see what happens, I’m going to put everything in place so if it does happen – I’m already there.
Agree with Matthew, there are a lot of users who don’t bother changing the default search engine. If they search for a few things and those searches give them the results they were after, they are more likely to continue just using that default. Hence this really is a HUGE thing for BING. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google saw a huge hit to its revenue from this as well.
What…? Google have to pay to get traffic?
They did for the firefox default search bar
Great article on Bing. Lots of folks overlook this great resource for traffic. Google may be at the head of the pack right now but there is still a lot of potential with Bing and folks are missing a lot of opportunity by dismissing Bing.
That is fine by me 🙂 Most of my success in SEO is due to people dismissing things
Hey Matt, Great post…I heard this was coming about a week ago and I was so happy because I hate google. I been using Bing for months after google robots kept busting my balls with their capcha… while trying to do research…Bing Banged Google square in the kisser I love it… this made my day….
Who types captchas in manually anymore? It’s 2014 =D
Hi MattNice post and appreciate the share.We are already spending a lot of time focusing on Bing, as a hedge against all the increased Panda/Penguin challengesI think the big one would be if/when Apple changes Safari to default to Bing like they have on SiriThis is kinda a medium sized loss for Google.To put this change in perspective, Firefox has 13 percent roughly of desktop traffic.So if half of Firefox users become Yahoo searchers, this would move 6.5 percent of desktop search away from Google to Bing powered search.Significant, but not a giant game changerFirefox is not a player at all in the mobile market, and half of search now is mobile and growing.Google is default in Android search, which is majority of mobile market.
Hi Matthew, you really kick ass 🙂 This is the kind of clean and latest news information I totally love. To be honest, this “little” Firefox Update just hadn’t got through to me before reading your post.I, too, consider this to be an interesting shift in the SEO landscape and I appreciate more pressure to be wielded on Google. In my opinion, they rely on their almost monopoly status and focus on their ambition to dominate loads of different technology niches, way too much. In my eyes, the quality of the search results has diminished.When it comes to the quality of Bing traffic, I have made the exerience that Bind Ads in fact did not convert very well, but this is not true for the Bing organic traffic. Keep up the great work and stay tuned!
Well they are certainly getting leaned on by the European Union right now!
Matt,Just had a conversation about Bing a few weeks ago where I made fun of its importance. I also knew of the Firefox & Yahoo deal but didn’t put it together!Am now furiously working on getting all of my client sites up to date for Bing search.
I was just in Bing webmaster tools yesterday and was wondering what was up with the big jump in impressions from Bing all of a sudden. I thought it was something I had done.Thanks for the timely write-up. I pushed it over to reddit for you as a thanks ;).
Thats very kind of you thanks 🙂
Just wanted to thank you Matthew for the great content and value you add.
Thanks Des!
I can confirm the news WITH PROOF Matt! I do a lot of bing ads, and yesterday my clicks were THREE TIMES more than EVER before!I am sure a direct result of more people on bing…
Hope you had those ad budgets under control =D
Hi Matt.I have also read a study where they say that Bing values the “meta keywords” to filter spam!What do you think ?
Looking at search results it doesnt seem to be all that relevant
Bing Seo,thats amazing for me.Thanks mate
Good luck!
Hey Matthew, great post again.I’m loving this, although my site might be a tad new (8 months-ish), the domain isn’t (around 2 years old) – might affect things a bit?The one thing that really stands out for me is that you can actually contact Bing and get things sorted out, unlike the big G that seems to be a big brother type, concealing info and not wanting to help the little guys. Good news, in my book.
I think you would do alright with that!
Nice to see Bing getting the love!I’ve also noticed a big lift in Bing paid search volume on a client project I am working on. It now brings in over 20% of the PPC volume. It used to be more like 10%. It is definitely getting more market share. The traffic is cheaper and with half the CPA’s of Google. Quality is lower though.Organic wise, I still find it hit and miss but now I now the share is improving will pay more attention.Plus you get to see keyword data!Nick
Time to start spending on bing ads! No pesky quality score either 🙂
Delighted for them. I like a few of the commentators above have sites that rank very well in Bing but do piss poor in Google despite trying everything in the book.So do you thing this will hamper all the plans for big authority domains that people have been harping on about if they can now get just enough traffic from Bing / Yahoo with crap sites instead. Is it worth the effort??Gaz
Well it depends how you look at it, traffic is traffic!
Fantastic news, Matt.And informative post.I recently submitted my sites to Bing, just few weeks ago…Finally the revenge against Google is coming.I am on the side of David. Will he defeat Goliath completely?
Stranger things have happened in the world!
I think you just made my day! : )
No problem 🙂
Thanks for the awesome post Matt! I’ve definitely been dragging my feet with Bing, although I do I have a Web Master account setup at least 🙂 Still, time to start taking it a little more seriously I think!
Did you submit your sitemaps at least 😛
Bing is eeeasy to rank on. On page all done properly and PBN links will shoot you to pos 1 on Bing in no time.
Bish bash bosh =D
If the above statistics is true (bing+yahoo have 35% of US market) that shows that perhaps the time has come to change leader google from his throne. In Russia, yandex is dominated, and in China is baidu, so for google remains only European market where there is no competition unfortunately.
Except for the European Union
Great post, and the move by FireFox is hardly surprising. I am one of those crazy people who manually sets Bing as their default search engine in browsers. Yes I know! My reasons for the switch are mostly because when I want to research something or really look for it on the web, I need a search engine that hasn’t been gamed by SEOs to appear high in search rankings. Interestingly, since the beginning of 2013 (when i switched my search engine to Bing) I see more relevant results in Bing than Google which is why I dumped it (google has improved btw…but still not enough). With Google I would click on links that appeared to have answers only to be fooled into looking at a completely non relevant page or worse have nothing of the sort anywhere on the page. It was truly frustrating. Anyhow, now I only use Google, if I cannot find on Bing which is probably only 10% of the time. Even then Google is mostly unable to help so its a wasted trip anyway.
Very interesting – it’s a switch I’ve considered as Bing results are generally better but change and all that 😛
Awesome writeup Matt. Never thought Bing would surface like this.BTW voted for your article on GrowthHackers. Thanks.
Very kind of you thank!
Very nice this post your blog
Very comment on this blog of my post.
Hi Matt, Thanks for the update about Bing SEO.No doubt that i saw an increase in traffic to my blog through YAHOO/BING.Everyone is surprised because everyone have been focusing on Google and their update.I have learned a lot from this. Take care and have a nice day ahead. -Oloyede Jamiu
Following the crowd sucks anyway 😛
Hi Matthew,When it comes to search traffic, i never considered Yahoo and Bing. I am even not sure whether my blog is properly submitted to Bing and Yahoo or not.After reading this Big Bing theory, i am going to make sure that i am on every search engine.Regards,
Better be getting your hustle on then =D
Alright! A new playground. LOL Even if it drops a little, there’s still money to be made. I updated but Google was still the default se. I like that Bing is more transparent. “The Big Bing” is really cute!
I love new playgrounds =D
But this is only a change in Firefox users.And Firefox has been steadily losing popularity over the years as Chrome and mobile increased.I just saw a stat that said 24% use Firefox and it’s 25% on my blog. I’d say Google let this go because they don’t see it as important long term. Or at least not important enough to outbid Yahoo.My back of the fag packet calculations say… at the very most a 6 point swing for Bing overall assuming all Firefox users accept the change… which they won’t.I’d say we are more likely to see a further fall in Firefox popularity and at best Bing/yahoo gets a boost of a couple of points.Bing and yahoo combined already had just under 30% market share in the US and this change should get them above 30%, but it’s an incremental change i think not a revolution.Perhaps a bigger threat to Google might be how well Windows 10 works out as a mobile operating system.
True and there is always going to a browser war but underneath all of this is the point that when change comes, it comes – we need to be ready!
Voted and shared. Great, thought provoking read. Their BWT while similar in concept to GWT offers a wealth of useful info. I wish GWT would sit up and take note.
Thanks Simon!
Thanks for the great insights. I have also noticed the bump and fall recently. May be Mozilla is gaining more power against the Chrome. Mozilla now can suggest which search engine I intend to use.And, when it comes to organic traffic does it matter either it is from Google or Bing? All that should matter is what they were looking for. So, bing results and conversions are also as important as Google’s. Thanks for clearing that part too.
No problem 🙂
Seriously, Matt? Bing SEO??mind-blowing..
Enjoy 🙂
matt i am a silent reader of your blog and your blog is one my fav. Sadly i opted in to get to the Bing SEO training course but i was not redirected to any bing related course..
Just follow the page to the subscriber resources
You said user engagement was important, that if less people clicked the back button you would rank higher. Do you think it could be possible to have multiple ips go to your site from bing (so that the percentage of people who stayed on the page would go up) and make yourself rank higher?
Try it and find out 😉
The Big Bing! Nice one Matt. Great analysis on your Google Analytics. Im sure the volume isn’t the same as Google, but Bing certainly can provide quality.
Thanks Ryan 🙂
Thanks for this Matt, such brilliant information that I have just been and signed up for Bing webmaster tools and submitted my site etc. None of which I had bothered to do before, great stuff!
Tut tut 😛
HA the Big Bing Theory ;)Those are some crazy numbers for Google to drop by.They have to be doing something to pull that around because it has to have a monetary effect on them surely?Perhaps Google will buy firefox? ….stranger things have happenedWill be looking forward to your video info on the subjectDanGreat write up Matt, just saw this over on inbound also
I’m pretty sure there stock price is going to drop in the next financial quarter!
That is a crazy amount of change for 24 hours. More than I thought it would be when I heard about it as I thought that Chrome had more browser market share these days.Personally, I like Bing traffic and have found it easier to get ranked (even with new domains) than the Big G. It’ll be interesting to see if they get power hungry as their market share grows.
Yeah it is massive, imagine what that will look like long term!
Wahou amazing article. I’m gonna prepare myself for the french big bing . Such a great opportunity !
It is indeed 🙂
I like your “Big Bing Theory” :PAlways good to see a big player like FireFox mix things up… wonder how their compensation model has changed, or what Yahoo/Bing paid for the change to take place.Firefox was making $300 million a year off it’s deal with Google.http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-is-google-funding-its-own-competition-in-the-firefox-os/
Hahaha then please help it catch on :POnly $300 million? Heck I’m going to get them to change the default search to this blog!
Great article Matt as always. Matt having never really looked at Bing in the past, I see one of my small sites which now days is nowhere in Google is position 1 and 2 for the EMD. Is there a tool to check the monthly traffic for the keyword along with the PPC ?Kind regardsJoe
Hey,Yes it’s all within Bing Webmaster Tools
Whoa that’s a huge difference in US searches. How did Google let this slip, I think they were supporting Mozilla for years 😀 Anyway, competition is definitely good for us, because one day by getting penalized by Google we might not lose our entire business…one day…
Yeah it’s a huge drop for Google!
I love your quality content, good thing you bring to the community these changes on Bing.So I can get ahead of my competitors in Latin America, I have little following your blog and it is more advanced than I have seen. In the Latin market there is nothing similar to your information, Latinos gurus always all the information for themselves are saved, they are too selfish, sorry for my English, I understand 80% and I’m using the google translator.Thank you for your golden information, I’m getting ahead than all my competitors thanks to you :)Now I will focus on all search engines :)Greetings from the Mexican Pacific Coast.Johnny
Hey,Well I’m pretty sure a lot of my readers use Firefox so they should have spotted it :PHablas ingles muy bien, pero mi espanol is no bueno mas de tiempo!
But can’t the users of Firefox just change the default search engine to Google. Like when people using internet explorer goes from Bing to Google.
Yes they can change back, but the key thing is its now changed by default.
That’s funny, when my sites got slapped years ago from Google my Bing traffic remained steady-ish. In fact, to this day Google rarely sends traffic and it all comes from Bing. A couple of my sites rank really well, some 1st SERP for some keywords and this is all with the Good Old Days of Over Optimization.
I have had exactly the same experience 🙂
Wow great post Matt, thanks for the work.If you had to describe Google and Bing with one concept or idea (I mean just one or two words) what would they be?”Search Engine” is cheating :DI mean something like Google: Links, Bing: Authority.
Hmmm well wait for next weeks post on Googles new signal 😉
Who would have thought this day would come.I’m thinking that duckduckgo is soon to follow
Its more than possible in this crazy world!
And I m really wait some another search engine to beat Google. It;s gonna be a fun 🙂