Search Engine Optimization for Bing

When I attended both SMX Advanced in Seattle back in June and SES San Jose just a couple of weeks ago, I heard a lot of questions from webmasters about Bing, especially pertaining to search engine optimization issues. Typically these included: I want to do SEO for Bing—where should I start? How is Bing different in terms of SEO? What do webmasters need to know and do? Are there any insider tips for successful ranking? I...
Read More

How Microsoft handles bots clicking on ads

There’s been some recent discussion in the SEO blogosphere asserting that Bing clicks its own adCenter ads. This has created some misunderstanding. Let’s take a moment to clarify what is actually happening, and what this really means for webmasters and advertisers. The Bing team is aware of an issue shared by all search engines: paid advertising links on sites are, on occasion, crawled and indexed by search engines. Standard practice...
Read More

Prevent a bot from getting “lost in space” (SEM 101)

We recently published a non-SEM 101 blog post on controlling the crawl rate of MSNBot, the Bing web crawler (aka robot, or simply just bot). That got me thinking about robots. Naturally, that led to The Robot on Lost in Space. Will Robinson, the show’s precocious youngster who was a whiz at 1960s-style, clunky electronics (even though the show was supposedly set in 1997!), was best friends with The Robot. They looked out for each other and...
Read More

Getting the IIS SEO Toolkit up and running

We recently published a popular blog post called Get detailed site analysis to solve problems that highlights the function and capabilities of the new, beta search engine optimization (SEO) Toolkit from the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) team. The tool works as an extension to the latest version of IIS, version 7. We’ve received some webmaster feedback with specific questions on how to set up IIS 7 before installing the IIS SEO...
Read More

Uncovering web-based treasure with Sitemaps (SEM 101)

Have you ever noticed how pirate treasure maps are like Sitemaps? While your website may not contain a treasure of gold and silver (unless it’s a metals commodities trading site!), if you have good content, that is certainly treasure to someone who is looking for it. Unfortunately, it’s buried on your website and no one knows what’s there except you! But since you want to share your site’s treasure with others, you need to...
Read More

Crawl delay and the Bing crawler, MSNBot

Search engines, such as Bing, need to regularly crawl websites not only  to  index new content, but also to check for content changes and removed content. Bing offers webmasters the ability to slow down the crawl rate to accommodate web server load issues. The use of such a setting is not always needed nor is it generally recommended, but it is available for use by webmasters should the need arise. Websites that are small (page-wise) and...
Read More

Get detailed site analysis to solve problems (SEM 101)

Last week I discussed common site errors that can inhibit the search engine crawler (aka bot). I pointed out common areas of concern and recommended a few tools to help diagnose such issues on your site’s pages. This week, I wanted to introduce a new tool for your collection that will be of great service to you in checking and maintaining your site. The tool, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit from the Microsoft Internet Information...
Read More

Common errors that can tank a site (SEM 101)

Imagine being a content developer for a website. You write a bunch of clever and informative articles, which should deliver a good dose of new visitors and ranking potential to the site. You submit them to the IT department for publishing online, and wait for good things to happen. But instead, it all falls flat. A look at your web analytics tools reveals that the number of site visitors has not increased over the time your new material was...
Read More

Bing and Yahoo! team up on search

We hope Wednesday’s announcement of the new search and advertising partnership with Yahoo! is just the first step in a journey that will provide more choice to consumers, better value to our customers, and more innovation by enabling efficiencies and integration within our Search and Search Advertising businesses. As of now, things here will remain status quo. There will be no immediate changes to our ongoing work because of this...
Read More

Images and Flash and script, oh my! (SEM 101)

The old adage that was once attributed to a Chinese proverb tells us, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But John McCarthy, a noted mathematician and computer science pioneer, stated conversely, “As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture.” Perhaps McCarthy was also a pioneer of search engine optimization (SEO)! The use of interesting and relevant images and animations on a website can certainly elevate...
Read More