While Google truly is the leading search engine, Bing takes the No. 2 spot. Bing is still in its nascent stages, but it is one of the fastest growing search engines with more than 30 percent market share in its kitty. There is a large amount of traffic being generated through Bing, although Bing still must work on developing its indexing competencies to compete with Google.
Although you might consider Google to be perfect for all your SEO needs, consider optimizing your website on both Google and Bing. Although the fundamentals of search engine optimization apply equally to both, optimizing for Google and Bing is not the same. While both search engines are similar in many ways, understanding their differences will help your SEO campaign fare better. Some aspects that work for Bing may also work just fine for Google, but not always.
Of course, the first difference between the two search engines is the home page. Bing has a colorful and graphical home whereas Google greets its viewers with a simple home page. Apart from this rather visual difference, there are other key differences between these two giant search engines you need to learn. Before deciding on Bing or Google, answer this simple question: ‘Which search engine is best for my SEO campaign?’
Google Versus Bing SEO – The Key Differences
Nearly 80 percent of traffic to all websites is directed via Google. If you keep an eye on the major sources of website traffic, you’ll see Google is the highest contributor.
There are pros and cons in each search engine, however. The differences in the working technology of these two major search engines means the search results will vary. Bing and Google work on different sets of parameters and algorithms. Understanding the differences and similarities will make you appreciate each search engine and help you to have a focused SEO campaign.
The Breakdown:
- Google enjoys huge link popularity. It also has better link diversity and anchor distribution. Bing, being a relatively young search engine, has yet to capture the attention of the public.
- The linking pages to your site play a major role in receiving a high ranking. Google expects you to have back links from pages that have relevant content. Google also places importance on pages that have keywords in the body of the page while Bing prefers keywords to be in the title tag.
- Google stresses site link popularity, diversity, relevance, content and anchor distribution whereas Bing emphasizes high page ranking, large site pages, capitalized terms and the presence of keywords in the site’s URLs.
- Google considers inbound links to be very important, unlike Bing – it pays attention to H1 tags, Meta descriptions and titles.
- When optimizing your site for Bing, pay attention to your XML sitemap and update it regularly.
- Forums fare better in Google than in Bing. You might even find some forums appearing at the top of Google’s search results.
- Google doesn’t give extra credit to .edu or .gov sites. Bing, however, seems to prefer sites with page authority. These sites would appear on Google’s first search results page only if they are informative.
- The age of the domain is a big draw for Bing. Although it’s likely older sites have more back links, Google doesn’t emphasize domain age.
- When you search for a vague term that may have more than just one meaning, Google is likely to pull up the most popular websites as the top search results. Bing, however, is more likely to list local results first.
- Bing, unlike Google, likes sites that have been created using Flash.
- Google is far more advanced in its understanding of words and their meanings. Therefore, it does a pretty good job of throwing up results with content related to keywords. Bing brings up results that match the keywords verbatim.
- Google is likely to consider your site even with messed up URLs. You can throw many parameters, codes and directories in your URL and get away with it. With Bing, however, you should keep your URL as clean and understandable as possible.
- You will find Bing brings up search results that offer diverse variations for the keywords. Bing, therefore, works well for websites that have a combination of keywords.
- Ultimately, choose the right search engine only after understanding your site, its needs, your SEO campaign and the time and resources available to you. There is absolutely no harm in optimizing your site for both Google and Bing and taking advantage of their similarities.
Christy Haywood Post from: SiteProNews
