Webmaster Blog | This is a place devoted to giving you deeper insight into the news, trends, people and technology behind Bing.

July182009

Heads up on tag optimization (SEM 101)

Much of what constitutes a well-architected webpage is never displayed in the page itself. The contents of the <body> tag are what you see in a browser. But a webpage consists of two major elements, the <body> tag only being one. The content of the <head> tag (and for that matter, the document type declaration (DTD), which precedes the <head> tag in the page’s code, is just as important for search engine optimization ...
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July12009

Making links work for you (SEM 101)

Links can be the lifeblood of a good website, as we discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly. But how well you manage them on your site from a site architecture perspective can be the difference between your website being starved for oxygen (aka search engine referral traffic) versus healthy and thriving. That’s why we do search engine optimization (SEO). This article is part 2 of the recent Site Architecture...
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June192009

Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly—Part 2 (SEM 101)

In the previous blog post, Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly—Part 1, I discussed that links are de facto endorsements of the site linked to, that the relevance of the linked to page to the one linking to it is critical for determining the value of the link, and how the quantity vs. quality argument shapes up regarding links. I also defined what is good and bad about each. So let’s pick up where I left off last time in our...
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June162009

Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly—Part 1 (SEM 101)

Lord Alfred Douglas once said, “All good poetry is forged slowly and patiently, link by link, with sweat and blood and tears.” He could have just as easily been talking about high-ranking websites (had he known about them — his quote pre-dates the 1920s!). The way to search engine optimization (SEO) success is neither fast nor simple (not that it has to be hard, though). But the accumulation of valuable, relevant, inbound links...
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January192009

Optimizing your very large site for search — Part 1

At Live Search, one of the most common questions we receive from our peers at microsoft.com and msn.com is how to optimize their sites for search. But microsoft.com is unlike most other sites on the Internet. It is huge, containing millions of URLs, and is growing all the time. However, large content sites like microsoft.com and msn.com are not the only sites that can have an infinite number of URLs. There are also large ecommerce sites and...
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December42008

Getting the right kind of links

On the web, links are the coin of the realm and as such, it is probably one of the most talked about subjects in webmaster blogs and at search conferences. In the last few weeks, there have been a few blog posts and "link" related product launches that make it clear there are still some misconceptions about what are effective and beneficial ways to build links. Link building is one of the most important and difficult jobs for a webmaster...
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October152008

SMX East 2008: Unraveling URLs and Demystifying Domains

This is the second of three posts covering our presentations at SMX East last week. URLs are the foundation of the Internet. However, they can cause some significant problems for search engines due to the number of synonyms that are often automatically created for each piece of content. If there was only one thing I wanted the audience to take away from this presentation, it was that they should always create short, descriptive URLs, and redirect...
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August142008

Making backlinks actionable again

In 2007, we shut off the linkdomain attribute in the advanced query syntax, but promised to make link data available to you as soon as possible. Last fall when we launched the initial beta of the Live Search Webmaster Center, we offered a limited look into backlink data. But we soon realized that for you to be successful, you really need more and better backlink data. That’s why we’re really excited about the updates that we a have...
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August62008

Big update to Webmaster Center tools

Creating websites and publishing on the web is getting simpler and simpler all the time, but with more content on the web it is becoming harder for webmasters and publishers to ensure that their content can be found. Last fall when we launched the Live Search Webmaster Center in beta, the goal was to establish a long term relationship with webmasters and help them achieve their goals by addressing the most common questions we hear, and help them...
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January112008

I'm not ranking in Live Search, what can I do?

That’s a good question, and you’ve come to the right place. If your site is not performing in Live Search or you are not being indexed by Live Search here are some steps you can take to change course and improve your rank. First and foremost at Live Search ranking is free and you can’t pay to boost your website’s relevance ranking. We have a completely automated ranking process which takes into account a...
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