Web Publishers: Are You Optimized for Bing?
Updated July 19, 2010
If you haven’t already, start optimizing your Web site for Bing. That’s because the long-awaited deal between Yahoo and Bing is about to take effect. Why is it important? In terms of market share, Yahoo and Bing are expected to combine for 30 percent – hence, the need to act.
Bing will power the search for Yahoo. However, each will still have separate identities. You might recall that Yahoo and Bing signed the advertising deal for a 10-year duration.
Website Magazine reports both Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing have warned publishers that Bing will take over Yahoo’s search effective next month or Sept.
Website Magazine also suggests you check out Bing’s new webmaster tools.
The magazine quotes an alert by Yaho0 to optimize for Bing “…if organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website.”
You know what? Success in organic search listings is indeed noticed by most Internet users.
“It also indicated that Yahoo! hopes to migrate its paid-search ads to Microsoft’s adCenter by the beginning of the 2010 holiday season, but that it may wait until the start of 2011 to take that action,” states Website Magazine.
In my experience, Bing has kept its promise to improve its method of organizing searches compared to MSN. The navigation has proved to be easy. While it’s similar to Google in many ways, personally, I’ve found it to be a great search experience.
Moreover, it’s fairly easy to optimize your site for good placement on Bing.
Here’s a checklist:
- Make sure you add your site to Bing. It has a dashboard for analysis of your summary, profile, links, keywords, site map and crawl issues. Don’t forget to add your site to Bing’s Local Listing Center.
- Like Google, Bing more easily recognizes domain age. Both recognize title tags and keywords for your content.
- Unlike Google, Bing is not as concerned about the quality of back links as it is anchor text. But my sense is great content attracts great links. (In my SEO work for clients, to save time from having to review other linking sites, I simply don’t allow back links with a Google Page Rank of less than 3. Even then, I do check to see the site’s focus before allowing it to back link to my client.)
- Be extra careful with your content, especially the headlines and blog summaries. Bing has a great feature, a document preview, which is a text box that shows up next to your mentions on Bing – the verbiage is copied from your site.
- As both Bing and Google pay homage to flash with stronger prominence, be sure to consider inserting such videos.
- Bing is far more amenable to publishing quality press releases than Google, which accelerate your success. Here’s a sample from Bing News of how some of my press releases appear. They’re in place for four weeks.
- Bing is very cognizant of social media. The more relevant social media you have, the better. Twitter and Facebook are good. Despite what you’ve read about sharing blogs on Digg.com, Digg is still a player. LinkedIn is terrific.
On a side note: If you want to reach professionals — LinkedIn is outstanding — if you participate on a frequent basis. LinkedIn members respond well to good content, especially if you introduce your content with a question. Actually, LinkedIn provides this Web site with more visitors than Google.
To summarize, it’s important not to dismiss the potential of Bing. Bing is attractive and is doing a good job. You’ll find it to be a fairly simple process to optimize for Bing.
From the Coach’s Corner, if you’re launching a new Web site, try to use HTML. That will help you make faster progress than you will with a blog format, such as WordPress. Google gives more preference to HTML, especially if you want to be inserted in Google News. WordPress simply will take you a little longer for success.
Here are some other basic pointers: Startup Toolkit – How to Make a Hit on the Internet.
5 Tips If Your Web Site’s Traffic Slows in Summer Months
Traffic on the Internet slows in the summertime, according to Peter A. Prestipino at Website Magazine. So much so, his article refers to the slowdown as the “Web summer doldrums.” Frankly, I’ve never noticed. But I respect his insights.
From his 10 years experience, he offers five tips for helping your summer Web traffic; they include:
Create 30, 60 and 90-day plans – Mr. Prestipino suggests developing and implementing strategies in 30-day increments.
“The 30-60-90 strategy is ideal as an outline of what you will accomplish, what you want to accomplish, and, finally, what you wish you could accomplish,” he writes.
“In 30 days you will want to have created a media center on your site; in 60 days you will want to have had 10 bloggers written about your website or its products and services, and in 90 days you will want to get coverage from at least one major media news source,” he adds. “There are clearly a lot of steps involved to get there but writing down your plan will get you thinking about how to achieve them. When you plan, you plan to succeed.”
Complete Big Projects – Mr. Prestipino asserts that in the process, you will uncover a challenge that needs to be solved.
“…big projects might be a Website redesign, link building campaigns, conversion testing, etc,” he writes. “When it comes to selecting which big project you want to complete, you’ll need to weigh the potential return against the time commitment and legwork necessary to get the project done.”
He points out the most-complex projects usually don’t provide short-term benefits.
“Decide what would most benefit your business (creating social media campaigns, email marketing campaigns, etc.) and stick with it,” he explains. “When you know what you need and resolve to complete the task, it will make a difference to the bottom line in the near and long term.”
Network until Your Fingers Hurt – He says a good summer-investment of time is working on your connections and contacts.
“If you’ve established a Facebook Fan page, recruit new members,” he writes. “If you’re a LinkedIn user, find colleagues, customers and others in your industry to connect with.”
He believes social media endeavors are vital and it’s important to be uncompromising in your efforts.
“The best place to look might just be in your own customer list and even your own inbox,” he suggests. “Start there and shore up your friend and fan base this summer for long-term Web success.”
Stockpile Information and Ideas – He says even if you want to take easy in the summer, at least start accumulating ideas and information.
“It will undoubtedly be a challenge not to act on the information you encounter on the Web as much of it will probably motivate you to act on the suggestions provided, but doing so will ultimately give you a library of ideas you can leverage in the future,” Mr. Prestipino writes.
He says he always generates about 30 article ideas and another 10 to create revenue for his magazine.
“Stockpiling information and ideas will serve you well when you hit those creative blocks or when you finish one project and want to start another,” he explains. “When you are prepared, your chances of success are that much higher.”
Learn One New Thing – Mr. Prestipino suggests learning at least one new concept.
“Learning is a process,” he philosophizes. “The more you know, the more prepared you are to achieve success — Web success.”
He also invites readers to share their ideas at www.websitemagazine.com.
He deserves a big thumbs-up for his excellent counsel. Actually, his Web site is a must-read if you want timely information.
From the Coach’s Corner, if you haven’t focused on your social-media potential but want to start, why not now?
A personal case study:
Since I learned that search engines incorporate social media to assess Web-site relevance, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Digg, etc., have provided a nice boost to this site’s online presence almost immediately after I implemented the social-media practices, especially on Google and Bing.
My Web site gets as many referrals from social media as it does from Google. It helps with repeat visitors. I don’t bother anyone by tweeting about having a cup of coffee or other trivia…it’s usually a tweet to convey useful information. Further, as soon as I post a headline from my business-coaching Web site, the number of visitors to my site skyrockets. (I also take advantage of the LinkedIn feature to synch my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Tweets are automatically posted on my LinkedIn account.) Frequently, they are re-tweeted.
Press releases with pictures have also been beneficial.
Also, I’ve posted articles on a technology-client’s site, and promoted them on Facebook which is synched with Twitter. The client has enjoyed a 50 percent increase in visitors and climbing.
To connect with me:
www.linkedin.com/in/terrycorbell
Google Speaks Out About Frequency vs. Value
In blogging and Web site publishing, what do you think is most important, freshness or quality? Chris Crum raised the intriguing question in his post at WebProNews.
His post is entitled: What’s More Important in Search? Freshness or Quality?
Mr. Crum thoughtfully spotted a Google Q&A webmaster video featuring Google’s Matt Cutts. In the video, Mr. Cutts explains the difference between what is important to users of your site vis-à-vis what’s important in SEO for search engine prominence.
Repeat visitors to your site probably appreciate being able to return to your site and enjoying new content. That gives them a reason to keep checking out your site and is, of course, the advantage that mega sites have over small blogs because they have more resources. They can insert new content every few hours.
However, the situation is different for search engines. If a blogger has to make a choice between frequency and quality, Google’s Mr. Cutts advocates quality over frequency. He states your site will fare better with quality on Google. He also asserts your site will attract more links in the long run.
That’s not to say you should necessarily forego focusing on frequency. When asked about real-time indexing of sites, Mr. Cutts comments in another video.
Mr. Crum also presents some interesting thoughts about freshness and the new Google SERP redesign (search engine results page).
“…the smaller brand sites have a better shot at showing up the more frequently they are updated, wrote Mr. Crum in another post. The bigger brands tend to rank higher, the wider the range of time selected.”
He also wrote about how smaller sites succeed: “Brian Klais, General Manager and VP of Product Mangagement at Covario had a very interesting post at Search Engine Land looking at how the time filter may even help smaller brands get some visibility.”
So, it’s a thought-provoking blog by Mr. Crum. My sense is value is important. But do what you can to accomplish both – delivering value as frequently as you can.
From the Coach’s Corner, some publishers have experienced a sudden decline in their search engine rankings. The solution is to focus on value and frequency, attracting links from highly ranked sites, and promotion success via social media. This column, “Surprise? Facebook and Twitter Increase Odds for Sales,” explains why.
In SEO, Your Site’s Download Speed Matters to Google
April 12, 2010
How fast does your Web site download? Google recently announced that it determines site rankings, in part, by download speed.
“We mentioned site speed as early as last year, and you can watch this video from February where I pointed out that we still put much more weight on factors like relevance, topicality, reputation, value-add, etc. — all the factors that you probably think about all the time,” wrote Google software engineer Matt Cutts in a recent blog.
“Compared to those signals, site speed will carry much less weight,” he added.
But another blog, Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, also mentioned site speed: “But faster sites don’t just improve user experience, recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”
Personally, I wonder if being fast qualifies as a green initiative.
The official Google also makes these suggestions:
- Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
- YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
- WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
- In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.
Mr. Cutts also wrote that Google’s official blog provides even more tools.
“…Google’s webmaster console provides information very close to the information that we’re actually using in our ranking,” he added. “In addition, various free-to-use tools offer things like in-depth analysis of individual pages. Google also provides an entire speed-related mini-site with tons of resources and videos about speeding up websites.”
He also says “big sites” will not get a competitive advantage in the added factor of site speed.
“Often even a little bit of work can make big differences for site speed,” explained Mr. Cutts. “So I think the average smaller web site can really benefit from this change, because a smaller website can often implement the best practices that speed up a site more easily than a larger organization that might move slower or be hindered by bureaucracy.”
In addition to downplaying load speed, he emphasized Internet users would appreciate the fastest-possible user experience.
“…this change highlights that there are very constructive things that can directly improve your website’s user experience,” he concluded.” Instead of wasting time on keyword meta tags, you can focus on some very easy, straightforward, small steps that can really improve how users perceive your site.”
My sense is that site speed does indeed play a vital role in search engine optimization. If you haven’t already, you might want to make certain that your site downloads fast as possible.
From the Coach’s Corner, for more tips on ranking well on Google, here’s another Biz Coach column: “Achieving Strong Results on Google Now Easier with Social Networking.”
Achieving Strong Results on Google Now Easier with Social Networking
As a business-coaching columnist, I enjoy doing a lot of reading. My email is filled with tons of material every day on topics ranging from finance to technology. Sometimes, it’s hard to stay abreast of it, but it’s enjoyable.
One of my favorites to at least scan is Website Magazine. They are up-to-date on their information.
An article on how to succeed on Google by Dante Monteverde, known as the SEO Corner Columnist, is really informative and reassuring to Web site entrepreneurs.
Most Web site owners have had to work hard at mastering Google in organic search or search engine optimization (SEO). That’s true for me. Compared to Bing, Google has been quirky to say the least.
But with social media optimization (SMO), it’s getting a lot easier on Google. It’s easier on Bing and the others because of SMO.
If you’re a little late to the party, this means Google’s blended search process includes social content with the organic elements, such as images, news and videos. That’s a much easier process for most of us.
Here’s the link to the article: SEO for Google Social Search.
From the Coach’s Corner, are you or anybody you know thinking about entrepreneurship?
If so, the long road to becoming a good entrepreneur is a difficult undertaking.
To see if you’re cut out to be your own boss, take an aptitude-entrepreneurial test.
P.S. If you’re a regular use of this Web site, you might have noticed this column is much shorter than usual…I’m taking a partial day off. We’ll chat with you soon.
Of Interest to Web Publishers, Videos Continue Surge in Popularity
Updated June 30, 2010
Including advertisements, here are the results of studies regarding online video viewing and usage:
Short-form Videos – Website Magazine reports Metacafe commissioned a study by Frank N. Magid Associates, which shows 80 percent of consumers prefer short-form videos. That includes movie previews, music videos and television shows.
But it represents bad news for video producers. Twenty-five percent of respondents enjoy short videos more than the actual TV shows.
Fifty-five percent of Web viewers enjoy video advertisements as much or more than on TV. That’s a 3 percent increase over 2009 results.
In demographics, online videos are most-popular with 18 to 24 year-olds. Eighty-five percent of males watch Internet videos each week – a 15 percent increase over 2009. Sixty-eight percent of females count it as a weekly routine – 27 percent higher than last year.
Conclusions about short-form videos: Keep them short and break up long videos into short segments. Make them professional. Ads, before or after your videos, are OK.
Display Ads by Format – Probably most interesting to publishers is that comScore released its study, also according to Website Magazine. comScore’s May 2010 report, shows online ad-format preferences in the United States. The No. 1 preference is JPEG display ads – 42.4 percent of impressions. Flash and rich-media ads total 40.3 percent of impressions.
Display Ads by Size – comScore also reports Leaderboard ads (728 x 90) were No. 1, preferred by 23.1 percent of respondents.
Rectangles were most-enjoyed by 23.1 percent, which were followed by medium rectangles (300 x 250) at 18.3 percent, and buttons (120 x 90) at 14.7 percent.
Note: Popup and popup under ads had less than 1 percent of the impressions.
So, if you’re a Web publisher, videos are an increasingly important indicator of your relevance to Internet users.
Videos continue to be the online rage as 33.2 billion were viewed online by 178 million in America in December, 2009, according to research firm, comScore.
comScore says the Google sites were the most popular with 13.2 billion videos for a 39.8 percent market share, thanks to YouTube. It garnered 99 percent of Google’s viewers.
Here are the other rankings of viewed videos:
· No. 2 Hulu -1 billion – 3 percent
· No.3 Microsoft – 561 million – 1.7 percent
· No. 4 Fox Interactive Media – 550.5 million – 1.7 percent
· No. 5 Yahoo – 539.4 million – 1.6 percent
· No. 6 Viacom Digital – 372.6 million – 1.1 percent
· No.7 Turner Network – 366.9 million – 1.1 percent
· No. 8 CBS Interactive – 297.2 million – .9 percent
· No. 9 Megavideo.com – 210.2 million – .6 percent
· No. 10 AOL – 209.9 million – .6 percent
This also means the 178 million viewers each saw an average of 187 videos.
In view of these numbers, it isn’t surprising that Google had the most unique viewers with 135.8 million. That’s 97.5 videos per person.
From the Coach’s Corner, here’s a valuable source of information in search engine optimization:
Thanks to a tip from Web Pro News, a video featuring Google’s Matt Cutts explains the problems/solutions of stale links on your site, Watch Video Here.