Microsoft’s new search engine Bing – and how to optimize your website for Bing

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has just become publicly available, allowing you to decide whether Microsoft’s latest effort has the goods to take on Google. Bing is available at www.bing.com and replaces Live Search.

Microsoft is expected to spend $80 million to $100 million on Bing marketing which would be a nice hedge against Yahoo! because Bing will most likely take market share from Yahoo!.

Whether Bing ultimately succeeds or not, it will push Google to keep innovating search, and the new pay per click competition will ensure that Google doesn’t get too greedy.

How is Bing different from Google?

Bing is not dramatically different from Google, but some people have found its results stronger. There are some visible changes:

• Bing shows a preview of the web pages in the search results when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of the search results.
• Bing displays fewer results if it is certain that it has understood your intent. The search for “Facebook”, for example, brings up just one result linking to the site itself.
• Some search results are divided into categories. For example, if you search for the popular musician “Justin Timberlake”, you’ll get results in the categories news, songs, movies, biography, wallpaper and downloads. In addition, the search results show images, videos and the popularity of the musician.
• Wikipedia searches can be displayed inline in the search results without leaving the Bing site by clicking the “Enhanced view” link.
• Bing features a different background image every day. The image contains special hidden hotspots that lead you to more information (soon advertising?) about the image.
• Despite the background image, Bing’s homepage loads very quickly in your web browser because the search box and logo load first. You can turn off the background image.
• Bing’s video search lets you watch videos without leaving the search engine.
• Bing offers specific health, shopping and travel search engines, as well as instant answers to travel searches. For instance, the search “Vegas hotels” displays a selection of hotels in Las Vegas, including hotel stars and prices.
• Bing’s search history lets you return to your most recent searches of the last two days. This feature can be turned off to protect your privacy.
• Some of Google’s features are missing, for example, Bing doesn’t seem to recognize misspellings and returns no results in these cases.

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How long does it take to get top rankings on Google?

Many people who start a website think that it is possible to get high rankings on Google within a few days. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Competition on the Internet is fierce and there are several factors that influence how long it takes until Google lists your website.

1. How old is your website?

If you have a brand new website then you have to wait. You can submit your website to Google but Google will only index your website if other websites link to your site.

In addition, you have to prove that your website is not spammy. Google has several filters for new websites and you have to earn Google’s trust before your website can get lasting high rankings. A new website can get good rankings for less competitive keywords but it usually takes about 6 months to gain the minimum level of trust that is necessary to get high rankings.

2. How optimized was your website before?

If you have an old and established website that was blocking search engine robots due to a broken robots.txt file or a bad website navigation then it can be relatively easy to show up in search engines.

If you remove the factors that keep search engine robots from your web pages then search engines will list your website relatively quickly. Of course, this doesn’t work if you have a new site.

3. How many inbound links does your website have?

If you have an old website that has very few links then it will take longer to get high rankings on Google. If your website has many inbound links, then Google will pick up the optimized pages on your website much quicker. The more quality links your website has, the quicker your optimized web pages will show up in Google’s results.

4. Which keywords do you target?

This is a very important factor! The more competitive your keyword is, the longer you will have to wait to get high rankings and the more links and optimized pages you need. Start with multiple word keywords that are related to your business and then proceed to the more competitive keywords when your website has good content and inbound links.

5. Who are your competitors?

If the website that are ranked in the top 10 results for your keyword all have thousands of inbound links and more than thousand pages then it’s not likely that your website will be able to get in the top 10 results if it has 10 inbound links and 20 pages. You can either wait for along time until you get top 10 rankings for that keywords (i.e. when you have a similar amount of pages and inbound links) or you can start with other keywords.

How many days, weeks or months does it take exactly?

Provided that your website has good inbound links and optimized web pages, you can get high rankings on Google within a few months if you have a brand new site and choose a very specific keyword that consists of several words. Old and established sites usually need some weeks for such a keyword.

If you target industry keywords, which usually consist of two or more words, brand new sites usually need six months to a year to get high rankings. An established site might get the same result within 3 months.

Highly competitive one word keywords usually require thousands of good inbound links. A brand new website can need several years to get high rankings for such a competitive keyword and even established sites can sometimes need more than a year.

Ranking test: can there be too many links to your home page?

In an online webmaster forum, a webmaster described the link experiment that he did with his websites. He tried to find out how linking to the home page affected his rankings.

What did the webmaster test?

The webmaster tested the effect of links from sub pages of his website to his home page. He tried links to the home page of his website from the navigation and from the content and he tried links with and without keywords.

The test was done with a 4 year old domain name with a dedicated IP address. The web pages were HTML only. The website ranks top 5 in Google for its main, second and third keyword phrases and it has a total of 90 pages with unique content.

What were the results of the test?

It seems that too many links to the home page of your website can have a negative effect on your rankings:

1. Linking to the home page from every page in the content with the same keyword caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages).
2. Linking to the home page from every page in the content using keyword variations caused a three pages drop in rankings (-3 pages).
3. Linking to the home page from the navigation with “main keyword” also caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages).
4. Linking to the home page from the first 10 pages listed on Google.com for “site:domain.com/*” increased the ranking from 5th to 3rd (+2 positions).

The webmaster also observed the following:

• Linking from the content using keyword variations was effective to a point, after which the rankings dropped.
• There seems to be a page threshold. If the number of pages that link is even slightly above the threshold, the rankings will drop.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t link to your home page?

It’s hard to tell whether the results of this experiment are valid because there are too many other variables that influence the rankings of a web page.

It doesn’t sound sensible that Google will downrank a web page that has a link to its home page on every page. Most users expect a link to the home page on every page of a website and even Google has a link to its home page from every page.

As Google’s usual webmaster advice is to focus on the website user, it seems implausible that Google would penalize home page links.

We think that it’s more likely that the ranking drops are caused by Google’s change filter. If you change your web page contents, Google will temporarily downrank your web pages. This has been described in a Google patent.

How the bounce rate of your website can affect your Google rankings

Does Google use the bounce rate of a web page to specify the position of that page in the search results? What does this mean for your website rankings and what can you do to get a better bounce rate?

What is the bounce rate?

There are two definitions: the bounce rate of your website is the percentage of visitors who see just one page of your website or the percentage of visitors who stay on your site for a small amount of time (only a few seconds).

The bounce rate helps you to measure the quality of traffic that your website gets and it also helps you to find out where your web pages could be improved.

Google’s definition of the bounce rate

The Google Analytics documentation defines the bounce rate as follows:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.”

This Google definition already indicates that Google thinks that web pages with a high bounce rate aren’t relevant to website visitors. If your web pages have a high bounce rate for a search term, Google might lower the rankings of your website for that search term.

Does Google use the bounce rate as a ranking factor?

Google has the ability to collect the bounce rate with the Google toolbar and Google Analytics. In addition, Google can measure the time between visits to their search engine by the same user and they can use the Google Chrome browser to measure the complete surfing behavior of users.

Last month, a webmaster performed a test that showed a significant ranking change as a result of a significant bounce rate change. The test is not very conclusive but chances are that Google really uses the bounce rate as a ranking factor.

The bounce rate alone might not be used by Google but combined with other factors, it could have an effect on the rankings. For example, Google could measure how many people start a new search for the same topic after visiting your web page. That would be an indicator that your website is not suitable for the chosen keyword.

What can you do to lower the bounce rate of your web pages?

A high bounce rate is usually a sign of a low quality web page. This means that your web page either doesn’t offer what the visitor is searching for or the usability of your web page isn’t good.

If you improved the contents and the usability of your web pages, you might lower your bounce rate from 75% to 65%. This would lead to a remarkable 40% increase in conversions (35 out of 100 visitors now stay on your website instead of 25 out of 100 visitors).

In addition to improving the usability of your web pages, you can lower your bounce rate by tailoring your landing pages to the keywords and ads that you run. If your landing pages offer the information that the searchers are looking for then you will get a lower bounce rate.

Lowering the bounce rate of your web pages has two major benefits: it’s likely that you will get more visitors from search engines and you will get a higher conversion rate. The only exceptions to the scenario above are one page websites and web pages that offer very compelling content on a single web page (for example Wikipedia pages).

Search engines use many more ranking factors than just the bounce rate. If you want to get high rankings on Google and other search engines, you should make sure that your web pages offer all elements that are necessary to get high rankings.

How your web page titles can help you with local search

If you’re selling products and services that are related to a special area, it is crucial that your website gets found by the right people. One of the easiest ways to get found by people that live in your area is to optimize your web page titles.

What is the web page title?

The title of a web page is the text that is written between the tags in the HTML code of a web page. The web page title is displayed in the web browser window when someone visits your website and it is usually used as the linked text when your website appear in the search results.

Why is it important to use optimized web page titles?

The web page title is one of the main factors that Google, Yahoo and other search engines use to rank web pages. A good web page title greatly improves the chances of getting high search engine rankings.

In addition, the web page title is used as the bold linked text on search result pages. That means that it should be clear, concise and appealing so that web surfers click on it.

How to change your web page title so that it gets better local rankings

If you optimize your web page titles correctly, they will both increase your search engine rankings and they will attract people from the right local area to your website.

You’ll benefit from targeted traffic and you’ll get more sales than before. Here are some things that you can do to improve your web page titles:

Include the name of your business, important keywords and your city in the title of your homepage:

Smith & Sons – The shoe shop for inexpensive footwear in London

Depending on your business size, change the order of these items. Well known businesses should list their company name first. If your business is new then it’s usually better to list the keyword first:

The shoe shop for inexpensive footwear: Smith & Sons in London

People are probably looking for a solution to their problem (inexpensive shoes) instead of your company name. Instead of your city, you can also use the name of the greater area if your service is available in that area.

Use a different title tag for every page. This is important. The title should reflect the content that can be found on the page. For branding purposes, the titles should contain your company name and a popular keyword for which you want to be found on search engines:

Smith & Sons: About our London shoe shop
Smith & Sons: Buy inexpensive sneakers in London
Smith & Sons: The best prices for boots in London

Use short web page titles. Short titles are much easier to read for web surfers. Do not try to stuff keywords in your web page title. It is much more better if your website is highly relevant to one keyword than somewhat relevant to many keywords.

If you want to optimize your website for different keywords, optimize different pages for different keywords.

Do not use special characters in your titles. Avoid symbols and other special characters. They might not be displayed properly on all computers and your website might look strange in the search results.
If you change your web page titles as explained above, your website will get better rankings on search engines and it will be found by people who live in the right area.

Do search engines think that your website is spam?

About three weeks ago, Microsoft was granted a new patent with the name Web Spam Classification Using Query Dependent Data. Although this patent application was filed by Microsoft, all major search engines probably use similar methods to classify web pages.

How do search engines analyze web pages?

Search engines look at a number of elements that can appear on web pages and within queries that web surfers use to find these pages.

For example, search engines may look for the most frequent keyword in the web page, the number of times a particular keyword appears in the web page, the domain name associated with the web page, the number of links pointing to the page, the HTML tags in which a keyword appears and many other factors.

The patent filing indicates that search engines look at hundreds of different factors to rank web pages.

How search engines try to detect spammy pages

The are so many potential spam pages on the Internet that search engines cannot identify all spam pages manually.

To identify potential spam pages, search engines might manually label some web pages as spam and then take information from that pages to find other spam pages.

For example, a web page that uses keyword stuffing has more keywords than a legitimate page. By training the spam detection algorithm with a few web pages that use keyword stuffing, other web pages that use keyword stuffing can be detected automatically.

In other words, a spam detection algorithm labels web pages as spam or not spam by looking at decisions made by humans. According to the patent application, the algorithm might look at the following factors:

• the number of inbound links coming from labeled spam pages
• the top level domain of the site
• the quality of phrases in the document and density of keywords (spammy terms)
• the count of the most frequent term
• the count of the number of unique terms
• the total number of terms and the number of words in the path
• the number of words in the title
• the rank of the domain and the average number of words
• the top-level domain
• the number of hits within a domain
• the number of users of a domain
• the number of hits on a URL and the number of users of a URL
• the date the URL was crawled, the last date page changed
• many more factors

If your website uses similar elements as the spammy web page then it’s likely that your website will be classified as spam. The usual impact of a website being labeled as spam is that the site might be pushed down in search results, or removed completely.

What does this mean for your website?

You should make sure that your web pages use similar elements as the top ranked pages instead of elements that can be found on spam pages.

How long can a text link be if it should improve your rankings?

The words that are used in the links to your website have an effect on the search engine rankings of your website for these keywords. For example, if very many websites use the word “blue widget” to link to your website, it is likely that your website will get a high ranking on Google for the keyword “blue widget”.

How many keywords does Google consider?

It’s absolutely certain that Google considers the words in the links to your site. The question is, how many words or characters does Google count in a link? Is there an optimal length for text links? Blogger Shaun Anderson did a test to find the answer.

The test set-up

Shaun Anderson created a long text link with 50 nonsense words. Each of the nonsense words was 6 characters long. For example, he might have used a link like this:

wergsd woivsd mliwdc woiuby 3245sc plorxc werxcd …

Then he added that link to the home page of a website that has good rankings on Google.

After some time, Shaun did a search for a keyword that the linked website ranked number one for and added the nonsense words to the search. By doing so, Google would only list the site in the search results if links to the site contained the nonsense word.

For example, if a website has a number one ranking for “buy used cars in dallas” then the website will only be returned by Google for “buy used cars in dallas wergsd” if Google has indexed a link with the text “wergsd” that points to the website.

The result: the perfect length seems to be 55 characters

Out of the 50 words in the link text, Google counted eight. Everything after the eighth word was ignored. Eight words that consist of six characters make 48 characters. The seven spaces between these six words add up to a total of 55 characters.

What does this mean for your website?

You should make sure that the important keywords come in the first 55 characters of the links that point to your website.

As many websites use the title of a web page to link to it, you should also consider the way you write your web page titles. If your important keywords are at the beginning of your web page titles, chances are that these keywords will also be used in the links to your site.

If you want to know if your web page titles are correct and if you also want to know if all other elements of your web page are ready for a top 10 ranking on Google, you should analyze your website now.

How your web page titles can help you with local search

If you’re selling products and services that are related to a special area, it is crucial that your website gets found by the right people. One of the easiest ways to get found by people that live in your area is to optimize your web page titles.

What is the web page title?

The title of a web page is the text that is written between the <title> and the </title> tags in the HTML code of a web page. The web page title is displayed in the web browser window when someone visits your website and it is usually used as the linked text when your website appear in the search results.

Why is it important to use optimized web page titles?

The web page title is one of the main factors that Google, Yahoo and other search engines use to rank web pages. A good web page title greatly improves the chances of getting high search engine rankings.

In addition, the web page title is used as the bold linked text on search result pages. That means that it should be clear, concise and appealing so that web surfers click on it.

How to change your web page title so that it gets better local rankings

If you optimize your web page titles correctly, they will both increase your search engine rankings and they will attract people from the right local area to your website.

You’ll benefit from targeted traffic and you’ll get more sales than before. Here are some things that you can do to improve your web page titles:

• Include the name of your business, important keywords and your city in the title of your homepage:

     Smith & Sons – The shoe shop for inexpensive footwear in London

• Depending on your business size, change the order of these items. Well known businesses should list their company name first. If your business is new then it’s usually better to list the keyword first:

     The shoe shop for inexpensive footwear: Smith & Sons in London

  People are probably looking for a solution to their problem (inexpensive shoes) instead of your company name. Instead of your city, you can also use the name of the greater area if your service is available in that area.

• Use a different title tag for every page. This is important. The title should reflect the content that can be found on the page. For branding purposes, the titles should contain your company name and a popular keyword for which you want to be found on search engines:

     Smith & Sons: About our London shoe shop
     Smith & Sons: Buy inexpensive sneakers in London
     Smith & Sons: The best prices for boots in London
  

• Use short web page titles. Short titles are much easier to read for web surfers. Do not try to stuff keywords in your web page title. It is much more better if your website is highly relevant to one keyword than somewhat relevant to many keywords.

  If you want to optimize your website for different keywords, optimize different pages for different keywords.

• Do not use special characters in your titles. Avoid symbols and other special characters. They might not be displayed properly on all computers and your website might look strange in the search results.

If you change your web page titles as explained above, your website will get better rankings on search engines and it will be found by people who live in the right area.

Unfortunately, the web page title is not the only element that influences the position of your website in the search results of Google and other search engines. If you want to make sure that your site appears in the top 10 results, you should optimize all factors that are needed to get top rankings.

SEO Link Building

How to convince webmasters that they should link to your site

Suppose that you have a great website with great content. Your web pages are perfectly optimized for visitors and search engines and you have found many related websites that could link to your site.

How do you convince these websites that they should link to your website? Here are five tips that will help you to convince other webmasters.

1. Offer something in return

The easiest thing that you could offer is a link in return. However, not all webmasters want to exchange links.

There are many things that you could offer in exchange for a link. This could be a discount for your products, an ad on your website or even a simple hint.

If you find a broken link on a website, inform the webmaster about the link. Tell him that your own website might be a good replacement for the broken link (if it is).

2. Ask your current link partners

If another website already links to you then they might add another link to a different page on your website.

Getting a second link from existing link partners is much easier than getting new links because you don’t have to explain yourself anymore. The other webmaster already knows you and your site.

3. Make friends with people from your industry

Networking can help you to get links to your website. This works best with blogs that are related to your website.

Contact the blog owners and compliment on their sites. Do not ask for a link in your first contact. When you’ve a good relationship with the blog owner, you might inform him about a new product or a new article that you’ve written.

Chances are that you’ll get a link from the blog then. These links from related blogs have a great impact on the position of your website in Google’s search results.

4. Show that other webmasters already linked to your website

It’s easier for people to do something if they see that other people have done the same thing before. If many other websites link to your website, you could mention this in your link request.

If a well known website mentioned your site, that’s even better: “As you might have seen on NYTimes.com, we’ve published a new product. This might be interesting to the visitors of your website.”

5. Offer something that other people don’t have

This is the easiest way to get links. If you have a report with ground-breaking new information or something other that’s very interesting and only available on your website then it will be very easy to get links to the page that contains that information.

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