Microsoft gave away some of the secrets behind the algorithm that ranks search results in Bing, giving new insights for ways to better your search engine optimization.
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Jacob Demmitt
Staff Writer- Puget Sound Business Journal
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Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled some of the secret recipe behind its Bing search engine, letting content producers know what its algorithm is looking for when it ranks results.
This kind of information is of particular interest to people trying to boost search engine optimization, or SEO, in an attempt to get hire ranks so more of their content is discovered.
SEO is considered a bit of an art, as many standard best practices have developed as companies have tried to top search results for years.
But Microsoft’s recent blog post does shed light on some of the less obvious SEO tips.
Change the author field
According to Microsoft’s blog post, Bing looks at the author of an article when deciding if it’s from an authoritative source and should thus be ranked higher. When the algorithm sees an unidentified author – like “admin” – that’s bad for SEO.
Be original
Bing said it considers the “effort and level of expertise required to generate the content” when ranking results. Sites with original content are preferred to those repackaging already existing information. For example, a real estate page that lists available properties isn’t going to do as well as a similar page that lists properties but also gives information on local schools.
Use multimedia
Bing said it favors pages with supporting multimedia content, like instructional videos, images or graphs.
Pay attention to your ads
Bing isn’t just looking at your content, but also the ads.
“Bing will promote and support websites and webmasters that provide ads relevant to the content of their website and place ads so that they do not interfere with the user experience,” Microsoft reported in the blog post. It says Web designers shouldn’t put too many ads at the top of the page before the content begins. It also said designers shouldn’t hide content behind ads, fail to clearly identify ads or feature ads that are “easily confused with navigational elements.” Doing any of this will cause your results ranking position to slip.
Jacob Demmitt covers technology companies for the Puget Sound Business Journal.
Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2014/12/11/microsoft-bing-seo-algorithm.html