Most people believe that if you are ranking well in Google, you must be doing well with Bing and Yahoo, but that is just not the case. Unfortunately, I found that most of the blog posts on this topic were favoring one search engine over another, but I believe that it is important to optimize for all three. You could be missing out on some great business if you are not optimized correctly for each of these search engines.
I want to set the record straight and give you the facts, so you can really understand the differences and similarities between these search engines and search ranking factors and why it is important to be optimizing for all.
Before we begin, I want to mention that Yahoo and Bing have and alliance, so that gives you one less search engine to worry about because the results will be the same in Yahoo and Bing.
Bing/Yahoo & Google SEO Similarities
- Links – Quality of a backlink profile holds weight in both Google and Bing, so it is important to have high quality links to your website.
- Results for Local Search – Page content and optimization should incorporate keywords based on geographic locations for success in the local results.
- Paid Search – works the same in both, but remember this is only rented space for your website
Bing/Yahoo & Google SEO Differences
Bing/Yahoo and Google have both subtle and notable differences in the way they evaluate websites.
- Matching Keywords
- Google: Google’s algorithm recognizes synonyms and context around a keyword. This allows a little freedom and creativity with your content.
- Bing: Uses exact keywords is best here.
- Double-Meaning Search Queries
- Google: If there is a keyword phrase with two meanings, the most popular website tends to rank first.
- Bing: A double meaning search in Bing provides local results first.
- Domain Age/Page Authority
- Google: Domain age does not factor in as much as the quality of backlinks pointing towards a domain. Also, Google does give favoritis towards .edu and .gov, they just tend to have quality links and good content.
- Bing: Puts importance on domain age when assigning rank, as well as favors .edu and .gov websites.
- Flash Content
- Google: Google cannot crawl and understand Flash websites
- Bing: Understands and crawls Flash websites very well and sometimes gives credit to websites that use it.
As you can see, Bing, Yahoo and Google all play a very important role in SEO and it is important to optimize for all. Just because you are ranking well in one search engine, does not mean you are ranking well in others. Make sure you are following all of the guidelines for each search engine’s algorithm for best results.
