For over 10 years now, I have concentrated most of my SEO efforts and site design
towards Google, mainly because they send me around 70% to 80% of my free organic
traffic depending on the site in question. Although Google, with their countless
updates and never ending Algorithm tweaking, has sent me into fits of
depression/rage/pure joy more times than I can count, but I still like Google and
can’t imagine my web-day or web-income without it.

However, Yahoo has now begun to test and show organic, as well as paid search listings,
from Microsoft. You will still see the same Yahoo interface but the results are coming
from Bing. Now is the time to optimize your site or sites for Bing if you haven’t done so
already.

Now I must admit, I am probably not the best one to be explaining this because as mentioned
above, with all my years online I have never really concentrated much of my SEO on Yahoo or
Bing. Now I have paid listings in both of them and many of my keywords are ranked high in
both Yahoo and Bing but I have never gone out and actually tried to raise my rankings in
any of them.

In other words, I have never really bothered with them because of the low volume of
traffic which they produce compared with Google. If you’re on a tight budget or you
have very little time, it’s best to concentrate your efforts on Google.

But putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea, especially now when
we don’t yet know the outcome of the Bing/Yahoo marriage. Ranking high in this new
search engine could produce more traffic and it’s best to be prepared for it.

Like Google, Bing has its own section for Webmasters which offers advice and tools.
Using these tools and following the SEO advice should get your site ranked high.


Here’s something directly from the Bing Toolbox:


“Web sites that naturally appear high in search engine results typically
have maximized their SEO methods, by using:

Relevant and unique title tags on all Web pages;
Succinct meta tag content descriptions;
Header tags (specifically h1 tags) within the content;
Text navigation links;
XML Sitemaps; and,
Robots.txt files. “


Find more helpful stuff here:


http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/

Now of course, how this whole transition plays out and what effect it will
have upon the online search world remains to be seen. Like most webmasters,
I constantly view my site’s stats and raw data… seeing where my visitors
are coming from and what keywords they are using to find my content.

For very lucrative sites I even monitor my site’s traffic logs sometimes on
an hourly basis… checking the latest 300 visitors. I know there are software
programs and site’s stats such as Awstats and Analog Stats. I also use Google
Analytics but closely monitoring your traffic gives you a special feel for how
well your site is performing.

I firmly believe you have to know your site like the back of your hand, you
have to know how well it is performing and what is working. Most of all, you have
to discover what is not working… if your visitors are immediately leaving your
site, your content may not be of a high enough quality or you are targeting the
wrong keywords.


Or even the wrong search engines.

If my Bing/Yahoo daily search traffic starts to increase, I will pay more attention
to ranking high in those search engines. But as of yet, I am not seeing the numbers
which would warrant extra time. This doesn’t mean these search engines doesn’t produce
good quality traffic – just saying the numbers aren’t there yet.

Nor should you be mis-lead by the small numbers, if this traffic is converting into sales
- you should be paying attention and optimizing your sites for Bing/Yahoo. That’s why
I have always found it profitable to have paid search listings in both Yahoo and Bing…
their traffic do convert into sales. So the transition does concern me somewhat and
so far things have gone smoothly.

Can Bing/Yahoo really compete with Google in organic search? I don’t think so, but
their combined numbers will probably go up and make it much more worth your while
to optimize for this new search engine.

To find out more about this whole transition and to get more tips try here:

http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2010/07/20/new-search-alliance-transition-updates-and-tips/

Google vs Yahoo Comparison

And here’s a great site to compare how your site ranks for your keywords
in both Google and Yahoo:

Compare Google & Yahoo

Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

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