Just when you thought you had Google figured out, a major monkey wrench comes hurtling through cyberspace. With bone-crunching chaos, it smashes your perfectly engineered SEO strategy into smithereens. When the dust clears and the fallout passes, what you’re staring at is a strange new animal. It’s not Google. It’s not Yahoo. It’s Bing. It’s Microsoft’s attempt to gain ascendancy in the king-of-the-search-engine-hill competition.

Enter a new head-scratching dilemma:  what is involved in Bing crawler optimization? Even though Google still tops the charts when it comes to search engine usage, there are some important facts you need to know when optimizing your site for Bing’s SEO crawler. Crawler mavens and SEO masters have come up with some answers. Here’s what you need to know about Bing crawler optimization. First, some general advice, and then a list of tips.

General Advice:  Bing is Not Google

First, you must be aware that Bing is not Google. Yes, that’s a painfully obvious statement, but here’s why it’s worth stating:  Bing uses a totally different system of crawling than Google does. For this reason, the optimization techniques and expectations that you may be familiar with under Google simply will not work with Bing. Here are some specifics.

Bing crawls slower than Google. Bing is what you could call a very cautious search engine. Rather than instantaneously crawl and rank post on the web that has high keyword or backlink levels, Bing is patient enough to wait for verification, warranting, and approval from a network of sites. Obviously, this means a longer wait for better Bing search engine ranking, but the slow-and-steady approach also protects Bing’s reputation. Bing demands a higher degree of honesty and integrity from the get-go than does Google. Bing wants high quality content. Bing’s SEO robot wants unique pages. Focus on quality and be patient. You’ll hit Bing’s pages soon enough.

Bing wants you to submit your site. For faster site ranking, you should submit your site to Bing. Bing wants it that way. If you open a webmaster account with Bing, which requires signing up with a Windows Live ID, you will have a higher degree of ‘trust’ from Bing. Adding your site to Bing and including a site map is an important first step in getting recognized by Bing.

Bing is young  … but growing. In the final analysis, don’t get overly panicky if you just can’t figure out Bing. SEO Crawlers and SEO robots are confusing. Bing is a young search engine, and as formidable as it may seem, it simply hasn’t hit the tipping point of being the major search engine. Google should still be your bread and butter when it comes to optimization techniques. Bing may catch up over time, and by then we’ll have some more things figured out about Bing’s SEO robot.

Specific Advice: A list of tips

So for the practical, brass tacks kind of advice, here’s a list of tips on Bing crawler optimization:

• Go for low keyword density. If you have more than three keywords per page, you’ll get the hairy eyebrow from the SEO crawler.
• Go for uniqueness. Specifically, you should have unique <title> tags and <meta> description tags. The title tags should match the keywords on the rest of the content in your site.
• Where possible, use text navigation links, ranger than graphical links within the site.
• Go for stellar content. Think, “A very intelligent human being is going to read this,” not, “Hmm. Wonder how the Bing crawler is going to do here?” Aim for powerful content, not just Bing crawler optimization.
• Focus. A narrow collection of keywords is important. Bing crawler optimization means that you should not use a broad range of keywords in your site content. Stick to a topic and focus on the keywords within that topic.
• Stay ethical. Any no-nos of SEO technique are still no-nos on Bing. They nab keyword stuffing and hidden text remarkably well.
• Aim for high quality backlinks, not just a big quantity of backlinks. To borrow a cliché: quality not quantity. Older sites are considered “high quality.” Bing doesn’t like Blogspot, nor really any blog sites for that matter. On the other hand, Bing likes Hubpages a lot.
• Put keywords into your URL.

That list of advice is pretty simple and short, but will go a long way as you engage in the kind of Bing optimization that will put you at the top of the page.

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