SEO for Bing – Top Ranking Tips & Tools

I was recently having a discussion with chetan bhawani who informed me that his thewwwblog received quite good number of visitors from the search engine Bing.com which was microsofts new launched venture after he checked the bing traffic reports. Then we knew there would be many people who would be searching all over the web with the query – SEO for Bing which can be helpful for them to get into the top of the Bing Search Engine to get more free traffic.

There cannot be much SEO Tips especially for the Bing Search Engine, but you need to make sure that your site is complaint with their guidelines and you have content posted in the manner the bing team recommends you. First of all you need to make sure that your website is submitted to the bing search engine after which you need take care of the following rules which can help your website to rank better.

Technical recommendations for your website :
Use the following techniques to ensure your website is technically optimized for MSNBot and other web crawlers:

• Use only well-formed, HTML code in your webpages. Make sure that all paired tags are closed, and that all links open the correct webpage. For information on validating your HTML code, see either HTTP Compression and HTTP Conditional Get test tool or W3C Markup Validation Service or use a comparable tool.
• If your website contains broken links, MSNBot might not be able to index your website effectively, thus preventing people from reaching all of your webpages. For information on finding broken links on your website, see the Help topic for the Webmaster Center’s Crawl Issues tool.
• If you move a webpage, set up the webpage’s original URL to redirect people to the new webpage. Indicate whether the move is permanent or temporary. For more information, see What to do when your website is relocated.
• Make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your website and isn’t on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your website. For more information, see Control which webpages on your website are indexed.
• Use a Robots.txt file or tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your website. You can use the Robots.txt file to prevent web crawlers from crawling specific files and folders. For more information about the Robots.txt file and the Robots Exclusion standard, see A Standard for Robot Exclusion. This site might be available in English only.
• Keep your URLs simple and static. URLs that are complicated or that change frequently are difficult to index as link destinations. For example, the URL www.example.com/mywebpage is easier for MSNBot to crawl and for people to type than a long URL with multiple extensions. Also, a URL that doesn’t change is easy for people to remember and bookmark. That makes your webpage a more likely link destination from other websites.
• Watch for malicious software (malware). Links to webpages on your website that lead to malware on third-party websites or contain malicious content, such as a maliciously corrupted image or document file, or a harmful ActiveX control or JavaScript, will be disabled and highlighted as Malware in Bing results webpages. See the Help topics for the Webmaster Center’s Crawl Issues tool and Outbound Links tool to learn how to find these detected malware issues on your website. See Remediate detected malware to help rid your website of all malware.

Content guidelines for your website :
The best way to attract people to your website, and keep them coming back, is to fill your webpages with valuable content in which your target audience is interested. The following guidelines can help you create a more effective and popular webpage:

• In the visible webpage text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your website.
• Limit all webpages to a reasonable size. Bing recommends covering one topic per webpage. An HTML webpage with no images should be under 150 KB.
• Make sure that each webpage is accessible by at least one static text link.
• Don’t put the text that you want indexed within images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it isn’t displayed only inside an image of your company logo.
• Add a sitemap, which helps MSNBot to find all of your webpages. Links that are embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements aren’t accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your sitemap. For information on creating sitemaps, see the Help topic for the Webmaster Center’s Sitemaps tool.
• Keep your website hierarchy fairly flat. That is, each webpage should only be from one to three clicks away from the default webpage.

Most of these tips are On-Page SEO tips because bing recommends site owners to work more on their own websites rather than working more on the Off Page SEO. Do let me know if you have any issues related to this topic.