In the world of SEO, Google reigns supreme, but what about its distant little cousin, Bing? Microsoft has recently claimed that they’ve hit 140 million active users on Bing, and while that may seem like a lot, it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the behemoth that is Google with its 3 billion users. Now, Bing doesn’t get talked about enough in SEO (or in general), but perhaps we need to readdress this. Maybe you should include Bing in your SEO strategy, but why?
Why Is Bing Hated So Much?
Bing has been the butt of internet and SEO jokes and memes for years, especially since it seemed like every Microsoft device had Bing set as the default search engine. At one point, even when you downloaded other bits of software, Bing would magically find itself as your default search engine again, even if you had changed it beforehand. But why exactly is Bing so unpopular compared to Google?
The simple answer to that lies in its simplicity… not in its use, but in its understanding. Bing has more of an outdated way of judging content, such as using meta keywords, which Google considered an important SEO factor years ago. Google can better understand context than Bing so it could get you better search results. Other differences include Google using mobile-first indexing, and Bing using social signals as important SEO factors to rank pages. Shockingly, in 2018, Microsoft even tried to sell Bing to Apple but to no avail.
A simple way to view the situation is that Bing is what Google used to be…10-15 years ago. Now, this may sound like an automatic “Bing is bad, don’t use it!” but there have been some surprising developments that may change the way we look at Bing and SEO.
Why You SHOULD Include Bing in Your SEO Strategy
Bing may have been the underdog in the SEO and search engine fight for so long, but lately, it seems Microsoft wants this to change. It has been investing more time and money into Bing and they may have a winning trick up their sleeve: OpenAI. Yes, the company behind ChatGPT is including some of their tech in Bing’s search results, making a small portion of those search results AI-fulfilled. Don’t put your tinfoil hats on just yet, though, because we’re still years away from AI taking over search results, but this just means that Bing is on the rise to get a slice of that eventual cake.
It’s important to note that Google hasn’t ALWAYS been the top dog of the search engine world. Optimised doorway pages used to be quite popular for search engines like AltaVista and Yahoo. This means that one day, as unlikely as it may seem, even Google might pass the torch to another engine, and Bing hopping on the AI train might give it a major advantage.
How Do I Include Bing in My SEO Strategy?
Do you need to invest a lot of time in Bing for SEO? Not quite, and your entire Bing SEO strategy could boil down to just one thing: Bing Webmaster Tools. It’s a free tool, quite similar to Google Search Console, and a good way of staying better informed because if there’s one thing SEO can never reward you on, it’s ignorance. So, just chuck your URL into Webmaster Tools and see how it goes. Do you need to bother optimising your content for Bing with meta keywords, its criteria for links, and the like? Not really. After all, it’s unlikely that Bing will be your target search console, anyway, so just signing up for Webmaster Tools and keeping an eye on it every now and then to future-proof your content is more than enough.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, Google remains on top of the SEO game, but that doesn’t mean we should count Bing out just yet. Just like Microsoft invested in an unlikely asset with OpenAI, you could make a similarly unlikely investment in Bing and see big results, even if not now, definitely later. With just a Webmaster Tools account and a couple of minutes here and there, you may hold an early access key to something special.
Last Updated on May 22, 2024
