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.

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.

Five internal linking tips that will improve your search engine rankings

If you want your website to be indexed by search engines, it is important that your site has a good link architecture. The link architecture of your website is the method that you use to link from your website pages to other pages of your website.

How search engines find the web pages on your website

Search engines use so-called spiders or robots to index web pages. Search engine spiders are relatively simple software programs. When they visit your web pages, they follow all links that they can find on the page to index the other pages of your website. Most search engines follow only text links.

JavaScript menus, Flash menus and search boxes cannot be accessed by most search engine spiders. That means that search engines will only index the web pages of your website that can be easily found by their spiders.

Five internal linking tips that will improve your search engine rankings

Most search engine spiders do not type into your search boxes and they do not use pull down menus. The following tips will help you to make sure that search engine spiders will index your web pages correctly:

1. Use simple text links to link to your web pages

   Most search engines cannot index fancy Flash or JavaScript menus. Some even have difficulty with image links. If possible, use simple text links to link to your web pages. You can make text links prettier by styling them with CSS.

2. Your most important pages should not be more than one click away from the index page

   Web pages that can be accessed with a few clicks from your home page are considered more important than web pages that are buried deep inside your website. It’s easier to get high rankings for these easy to access pages.

3. Use descriptive link texts
   
   The text that you use to link to your web pages helps search engines to better understand your content. If you sell shoes on your website, do not use links such as <a href=”page.htm”>Click here</a> but descriptive link texts such as <a href=”page.htm”>business shoes</a>.

   That makes it easier for search engines to put the page into a context and it will be more likely that the page gets high rankings for the keyword “business shoes”.

4. Create a sitemap
   
   A sitemap is a simple web page that contains link to all important pages of your website. You could add a link to your sitemap in the footer of every web page. By doing this, search engines can find all important pages with two clicks.
5. Check the validity of your HTML code

   Errors in the HTML code of your web pages can prevent search engines from indexing your web pages correctly. For example, an HTML error might indicate the end of a web page before the actual content begins. That would mean that search engines would skip the content and any links of that page.

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.

Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?

Getting high rankings on Google is so important for the success of a website that some webmasters try anything to get on Google’s first result page.

Unfortunately, many of the methods that promise high search engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn’t like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized.

Which web page elements are cosidered spam by Google?

Google considers quite a few things as spam. The most popular ones are automatically generated doorway pages, cloaking and false redirects, keyword stuffing, hidden text or hidden links, paid links and automated linking systems.

What does Google do to penalize websites?

When Google penalizes a website, the website will either be removed completely from the index or the positions of a website in the search results will be lowered.

Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?

In a discussion in an online forum, webmasters shared their experience with re-inclusion requests on Google. One webmaster reported that it took over one year until a website had its old rankings back:

“One of my clients was completely banned from Google for a spammy link exchange program; we cleaned ‘em all up and filed a reinclusion request, and they are currently #1-3 for just about every relevant search phrase you could think of.

They’re ranking higher now than they ever did before the penalty – but it did take about a year to work their way up to that point.”

Another webmaster confirmed that it takes long until Google re-gains trust in a website:

“That’s what I’ve seen, too. A long, slow release from ‘probation’ as trust builds.

I do think Google always has a record of the past penalty somewhere, and any future infractions might be dealt with quite harshly. But you definitely can see a site get completely released from the ranking effects of a penalty.”

It’s very likely that Google keeps a record of all previous penalties that have been applied to a website.

What does this mean for your website?

You should avoid shady SEO methods at all costs. Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If someone promises you a quick and easy solution that requires no or little work then it is very likely that it’s spam.

If your website has been penalized, remove all spam elements from your website and file a re-inclusion request on Google.

It seems that Google does forgive penalized websites but it takes a long time until a penalized site has its rankings back. During that time, you’ll lose a lot of visitors and sales.