Query v. Session: Expanding Your Keyword Research Envelope

If you’re into search engine optimization at any level, you know that keyword research is the beginning of the journey.  It’s your best bet to understanding what people are searching for and what content should be most popular on your site. And, we’re all used to using the standard tools to perform the research.  Enter a keyword, related keywords are returned along with the query volumes over a selected date range. ...
Read More

Announcing Malware Re-Evaluation and Geo-Targeting in Webmaster Tools

Today, we are releasing two new features in Bing Webmaster Tools. The first feature — the new Malware tool — helps you understand whether or not you site contains malware and also allows you to submit and track a “Malware Re-Evaluation” request. You can find the new Malware tool in the Reports & Data section. The second feature — Geo-Targeting — helps you provide Bing with information about the audience you...
Read More

Bing Business Portal is Now Bing Places for Business

Your customers are online – are you? We know time is in short supply when you are busy running your business. That’s why at Bing we are always looking for ways to simplify your experience of getting your business online and managing your business reputation on the web. The launch of Bing Places for business is the first of many steps in our effort to provide you with all the tools you need to easily and quickly find local customers...
Read More

SEOs With Their Heads in the Sand?

Over the last 3 months I’ve spoken at 9 conferences and done 5 live webinars.  And a trend has emerged, unfortunately.  This trend is split between companies and consultants, though from along the singular line of SEO work. To illustrate, I’ll paraphrase a recent Twitter exchange.  No names, to protect the innocent, and if they read this, ferme la bouche… 😉 Tweeter: Duane, we have a lot of problems with scrapers....
Read More

Common Questions for Bing from Businesses

Let’s take a look at some common questions we see frequently whenever we meet with businesses at conferences and events.  These four questions pop up in most of the interactions we have, and also in hallway conversations.  The questions might seem simple enough, but as usual, the answers are a bit more detailed. I want to do search engine optimization (SEO) for my site because it’s free.  Where do I start? a. First...
Read More

The SEO Tag: Empowering Webmasters To Rank Better

Since search engine optimization first became a viable marketing tactic, SEOs have sought to decipher the algorithms used by search engines in an effort to place their content higher in the rankings.  In the vast majority of cases, this was done to ensure two things: 1 – good content ranked well 2 – the business producing the good content received traffic Along the way, some SEOs abused the systems to try to game the results. ...
Read More

Does SEO Still Have a Role to Play?

With social such a factor for businesses today, it’s easy to overlook the tried and true in search of the new and shiny.  At the last two conferences I’ve attended, it’s a theme that’s surfacing: if we’ve got social, and it drives business, do we need to invest in SEO? For those reading this blog, and in the industry, the answer might seem obvious, but let’s examine this a bit. Social has the ability to...
Read More

Search Engine Optimization Best Practices for AJAX URLs

As a member of the Bing Index team I am often asked by web publishers and Content Management Systems (CMS) companies to provide coding best practices for their web sites. Today, I am pleased to share a fundamental improvement to our previous coding best practices related to AJAX. AJAX URLs In the past few years, AJAX (shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has become extremely popular with web developers looking to create more dynamic and...
Read More

Bing WMT Launches Site Move Tool

Moving domains? Site IA redesign? Finally managed to get your hands on a coveted domain name and willing to make the jump? Have you just gone through a big site redesign with a new directory structure, and want to let us know about it so that we can update our index to reflect your redirects? Then we have good news for you! Let us know via the Site Move Tool. Today we’re adding another item to your toolbox that lets you do just that. The new...
Read More

Bing Webmaster Tools is on the Road

Grab your suitcase, book a taxi and join us for our SouthWest road trip!  This week we’ll be attending SXSW in Austin, TX and enjoying some of the best food trucks the nation has to offer.  From 5 – 6 PM on March 8th, join Duane Forrester as he teams up with Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan for How To Rank Better in Google & Bing, where we’ll discuss the do’s and don’ts of search marketing. After a quick...
Read More