Optimize for Bing - Don't Miss Out Yahoo Traffic	Visited: 1617 5.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Kabir Bedi October 06, 2009

The news about Microsoft-Yahoo deal had ruled the headlines lately with them proclaiming that Yahoo search will be powered by Bing in terms of algorithmic ranking. Bing will handle the back-end while Yahoo manages the front-end design of the all new Yahoo Search. This is slated to happen sometime next year and before that you need to be all prepared for the change.

For a major part of web users, search engine optimization is synonymous with only Google. Think SEO and its all about making efforts to reach the top slots of Google SERPs. However, one should not forget the traffic that is generated through Yahoo Search... which is quite a considerable amount. Yes... there are people in the world who use Yahoo as their prime search engine.

And with Bing taking over Yahoo, webmasters would need to make some serious efforts to optimize their websites for Bing. And those who see a good deal of traffic from Yahoo Search would need to give it even more attention because as they rank in Bing will be how they rank on Yahoo! So, if Yahoo drives a significant amount of traffic to your website, then you should definitely spend some time and efforts to look at the latest ranking reports and strategize accordingly. Here are some things you should consider:

Determine the Keywords

Analyze the recent ranking reports of your website and determine the keywords for which you rank well in Yahoo but not in Bing. These are the keywords you would need to pay attention to. Put in some hard and diligent efforts to optimize these keywords for Bing before next year. Once the Bing-powered-Yahoo Search plan gets launched officially, you will rank on Yahoo only as you rank on Bing. So get started NOW!

6-10 Yahoo Terms

Next thing you need to do is pick out terms for which you rank on the 6th to 10th position on Yahoo that may return ‘Quick Tabs’. Bing has a pretty unique way of displaying its search results. It presents the top five results for the primary keyword that you entered, then displays the top three results for up to five related terms thereby presenting a list of 20 odd possible listings from which you can select. So, with the prime focus is definitely on the first five results and so ranking 6-10 is comparatively less valuable.

Link Building

Presently, if you rank 6-10 for any of these keywords, start doing some aggressive link building activities to move them into the top 5. also, try to achieve the top three results for the terms that Bing chooses for the Quick Tabs. Since these terms are more targeted, they have better chances to convert.

Upgrade your Budget

Even if it is temporary, it is advisable to increase your paid budget to account for any keywords that you are not able to get ranked to prevent complete invisibility for the same. You should also consider increasing the time that you devote to your link building activities for particular pages that contain these keywords.

Inspite of certain differences, both Bing and Google like quality and relevant links along with good content. So make sure your website delivers what they want.