4 Differences Between Optimising Your Website For Google vs. Optimising For Bing

When we talk about search engine optimisation, we right away think about optimising websites for Google.

There is no doubt that Google is by far the biggest search engine out there. For most websites and online businesses, more than 75% of organic traffic comes from Google. However, it does not mean that you should completely forget about other major search engines.

One of those other big names is Bing.

And in this article, we share a few tips with you that will help you optimise your website content for Bing. By doing a bit more work optimising your website and web pages for Bing, you will be able to get additional free search engine traffic.

Here are four differences between optimising for Google vs. optimising for Bing.

1. Keywords

Google and Bing treat keywords and keyword optimisation slightly differently. Simply put, Google relies heavily in understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning behind every search.

This is why with Google searchers do not always have to use the exact keywords to find their desired content. In other words, your content may appear in the search engine results pages for keywords that you might not have specifically used.

On the other hand, Bing wants webmasters to be as specific as possible with keywords. Bing does want content marketers and publishers to include specific keywords that they want to rank for.

What it means is that some of your content may appear in Google search engine results pages for certain keywords. However, those web pages may not appear for some keywords in Bing because you didn’t include those specific keywords in the web pages.

Therefore, if you want to rank for specific keywords in Bing, make sure to explicitly include them in your web pages.

2. The Importance of Meta Keywords

Meta keywords have been a matter of debate for quite some time now.

Some believe that they matter in search engine rankings and, therefore, must be included. Others believe that meta keywords do not matter anymore, and whether you use them or not does not really make a difference in the search engine rankings.

Here’s why.

Google has confirmed that meta keywords do not matter in their search engine rankings. But Bing has revealed that adding meta keywords into web pages have a big impact in improving search engine rankings.

In short, meta keyword isn’t a ranking signal for Google. However, it is for Bing.

3. Social Signals

Google has confirmed that social signals do not play any role in determining a website’s search engine ranking. However, SEO experts have long speculated that despite Google’s denying there is still some association between the two.

Bing, however, does not leave any room for speculations because it has clearly explained that social signals do have “an impact on how you rank organically in the long run.”

So, if you want to rank on Google, you may or may not have to pay attention to social signals (engagement on social media websites, Facebook shares, Retweets, etc.). But these are important factors when it comes to optimising your website for Bing.

4. Multimedia Content

Here is an aspect where Bing has the lead on Google.

As you must know, Google does not have the capability to properly understand and interpret visual content, like videos and images. Instead, it relies on the ‘alt text’ you provide for understanding what an image is about.

On the other hand, Bing can accurately crawl and understand videos, audio files, and images. In fact, Bing can also crawl Flash websites.

This opens up new doors for opportunities when you are optimising content for Bing.

It does not mean that you should just create a Flash website (because that is not the best way to go). But you can leverage audio files, videos files, and images for ranking in Bing’s search engine results pages, which isn’t currently possible with Google.

Final Words

As you can see, most of the ranking factors for both search engines overlap a lot. However, there are still some small differences.

By making small changes, like focusing on social signals and adding meta keywords, you can also rank highly in Bing’s SERPs and get additional free organic traffic.