Don't Lose Yahoo Traffic By Not Optimizing for Bing

As you're probably aware, the plan for the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo that handle the front-end design of the new Yahoo Search. That should be happening next year sometime. Are you ready for Yahoo's switch to Bing? 

iCrossing Search Strategist David Shapiro
"With the way Bing displays search results for these queries, ranking 6-10 is significantly less valuable," says Shapiro. "Bing returns the top five results for the primary keyword you entered, then displays the top three results for up to five related terms, providing a list of 20 possible listings for the user to select."

"If you currently rank 6-10 for any of these keywords you should work on building links to move up into the top five, and focus on achieving top three results for the terms that Bing has chosen for the Quick Tabs, especially considering these terms are more targeted and likely convert better," he adds. 

There are differences between Google and Bing, but Microsoft's stance on SEO isn't all that different than Google's. There are different algorithms at play, but both like quality, relevant links and good content. In fact, if you've optimized for Live Search in the past, you should be happy to know that Bing's not that different from that either.

"There have been no major changes to the MSNBot crawler during the upgrade to Bing," Microsoft says in a
Do yourself a favor and read that white paper. As Shapiro says, you would also do well to make sure your sites are listed with Twitter and blogs) are driving a lot of traffic to websites as well.

Read this article on getting more traffic from Bing's Image Search useful.

Are you concerned about losing Yahoo traffic once it switches to Bing?