Bing SEO versus Google SEO

Whenever you come across conversations or seminars where SEOs come out of the woodworks, you will always hear the center of the conversation around what Google is doing, or what they will be doing. This is because, well, Google is the giant when it comes to search engines, but it is not the only one.

If you are looking to handle some SEO for yourself, or are familiar with Microsoft products, then Bing is no stranger to you. As much as people defer to Google, Bing is still a wonderful search engine to optimize for.

Are there differences in how Bing and Google perceive things? Let’s find out.

Keywords.

Keywords are always at the heart of any SEO efforts. Your website will always remain at the periphery if you don’t conduct your keyword research and implement the findings. That said, Bing and Google will handle your keywords a little bit differently.

For one, Google will employ what is known as semantic search. The purpose of this is to estimate the search intent of the user and provide results that match the context behind the query. While using exact match keywords on your website won’t necessarily break your site, Google prefers you come up with content that is topically relevant.

Bing, on the other hand, advises webmasters and SEOs to try something different. Bing will prefer it if you were to use precise and targeted keywords, if at all possible. So, to rank higher on Google, straightforward keywords should be the direction you take.

Backlinks.

Ah, the boogeyman of SEOs. A great number will advocate for them strongly, yet the other half will swear strongly against them as being no longer relevant. No matter which side you stand on, you do recognize the importance of backlinks for building domain authority.

Both Bing and Google do value the backlinks that you have to your website. However, the two will judge those backlinks in completely different ways. For one, Google will always go for the quality backlinks over the number that you will have built. A website that has authoritative backlinks to it will always rank higher than a website with numerous low authority backlinks.

Bing, on the other hand, of course will value the quality of backlinks to a website. However, the difference comes in with domain age. The older and more established websites that link to you will be the reason that you website rises up Bing’s search results pages.

Social Media.

Google has been denying for a very long time that activity on social media does not play a part in how they rank pages. This has been a common theme for years, especially with their specialist John Mueller on Twitter.

Bing, on the other hand, does not attempt to hide their reliance on social media signals to determine how they are going to rank webpages. Bing looks at sites that are heavily mentioned on sites such as Facebook and Twitter as sees them as having valuable information. The more a site is liked and shared on social media, the more importance Bing hands to that site.