As Bing continues to increase its market share in search through optimization and innovation, the relevance of the ‘being found’ aspect will rise. Although Facebook is confident in its ability to replace email, Google, YouTube, Flickr, and any other online property, paying attention to Bing for search engine optimization is still worthwhile despite Facebook’s arrogance.
At first, I really liked Bing’s flight search results. Bing’s search engine made my search for low-cost flights considerably simpler and more reliable than Google’s. They keep releasing updates that are sure to impress web users and search engines alike, so their prominence is only expected to rise.
Bing now provides search results for Facebook and is expected to power Yahoo searches in the near future. They are putting a premium on fun, thus they just released nearly a hundred games that can be played online without the need for risky downloads. They are expanding their entertainment offerings to include song lyrics and online music streaming among other things. To that end, Bing is constantly releasing updates and adding new capabilities, and it is also developing important strategic partnerships, so it is only a matter of time before it is considered a major player in the SEO field.
Therefore, this is an excellent moment to start doing search engine optimization with Bing. These are such easy tasks that you won’t even need to bring in a professional.
Step one is to get Bing to recognise your site as an option for users to explore. BingSubmit is where you should go to have your site indexed. Easy enough.
The next step in getting your site indexed by Bing is to submit your sitemap to them. It is hoped that you have already submitted an XML site map to Google (or had one produced by your web guy). Now, provide Bing the same XML site map. Enter the following full URL into your browser’s address bar, replacing “yourwebaddress.com” with your actual web address, and hitting enter.
The sitemap for your website can be found at: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml.
You should schedule a follow-up review of the findings in a week or longer. Site:yourwebaddress.com returns results that only Bing has indexed for your website. Just in case you forgot, replace ‘yourwebaddress’ with your real web address. Not really expecting it to happen, but just in case.
Google’s search bar includes a site: feature for investigating the resources the company has indexed. If you have dynamic pages, like those generated by a blog or a library, you’ll want to make sure they’re being included in the indexing process, so keeping an eye on these results is a smart idea. If they aren’t, check the source code for any instructions given to the robots; if that’s gibberish, contact your web person to find out what’s holding up the indexing process.
There is no downside to getting started with Bing SERP Checker, as there is no expense and very little effort invested. If I’m incorrect and Bing’s market share doesn’t increase, at least consider whether or not it’s better to be found on Bing than elsewhere.
