Is Bing Better than Google for SEO?

I was at a local networking event last week and was surprised when I was told by an owner of a large national Commercial Electrical Contracting group that most of his enquiries come from Bing as opposed to Google. At Manchester SEO we have been optimising clients websites for Bing for a long time, but until now I hadn’t heard anyone say that most of their business had come from that particular search engine. SO I thought we’d delve a bit deeper into what benefits there are to ranking highly on Bing.

The phrase “Let’s Google it” has now become part of everyday conversation.

when you’ve got a question, or want to find out how to do something or what it means, heading over to Google to find out can be both a blessing and a curse. How many times do you look at a group of people together, all looking down at their phones instead of each other. 

It’s no surprise that current statistics show that Google has as much as 90% global market share in Search. This is why businesses want to get their rankings to the top, and digital marketers focus the majority of their organic SEO and PPC strategies on Alphabet’s search giant. However, Microsoft’s Bing could be an able companion for search success and in this blog we detail why it shouldn’t be overlooked.

While Bing may only have around 4% of the worldwide market share in the UK it has a a whopping 6% share. Despite the low market share, Bing still attracts over a billion unique visitors a month and 12 billion monthly search requests. It also has various advantages over Google that would benefit any business’s digital marketing strategy. So, what can Bing do better than Google?

Competition on Bing is LOWER

Most websites being “Google 1st” in their search engine optimization strategy, this can leave SEO for Bing neglected by many. SMEs probably find that bigger, established corporations take positions 1-5 in Google’s SERPs. This can be due to many things like UX, big marketing budgets and the efforts they put in to content, making it trickier to get to the top. 

However, with Bing being a second thought in terms of strategy, it means getting to the top is not only easier, it’s a much quicker win that can work well alongside your efforts with Google. However, a combined strategy to target both search engines will help your site appear further up in both for your targeted keywords. What helps is that the SEO efforts you make in Google will most often also benefit you in Bing.

Advertising on Bing is Cheaper than Google

With less competition on Bing, advertising is much cheaper. Bing Ads use a bidding platform similar to Google Ads but has less competition so better ad positions are available, as well as cheaper costs per click. With any improved ad position we know this has a positive effect on click-through rates (CTR), especially in comparison to Google.

Alongside improved positioning there is also device targeting options and more granular control over campaigns, this allows you to be very specific when targeting your audience. Bing Ads is an alternative that SMEs should seriously consider for an improved ROI.

Bing Ranking Factors are MUCH Clearer

Bing offers their own webmaster guidelines for ranking on the search engine, and guess what, they aren’t as complicated as Google’s. For example, we know the following has an impact on ranking on Bing:

• Importance of user engagement – this is measured through users clicking through to a site, how long they remain on there and if they bounce away. Having engaging and relevant content, links to various services and effective call to actions are examples of techniques which will keep user engagement.
• Click-through rates matter – combining with user engagement data, Bing measures the relevance of content for the user. Titles and descriptions need to be written with human interaction in mind.
• Social signals – Bing places a stronger reliance on social signals than Google, as it even embeds return posts from Facebook & Google into search results.
• Backlinks take a back seat – Bing is more concerned with seeing ‘editorial’ type links, and links that are of much higher quality, rather than huge quantities of irrelevant backlinks to the site.
• Content density – Bing places a higher value on high-quality, relevant and longer content that is more engaging to users.

Small Businesses can get a Boost from Bing’s Local Search

It is easier to gain local visibility in Bing than it is on Google. With Bing Places, claiming your business listing and edit your profile to explain exactly what you do and target keywords is so much easier. The extra personalisation options allows your business to stand out further from the crowd.

Bing Has a Partnership with Yahoo

Earlier we detailed the search market share of Bing compared to Google, this however it doesn’t tell the full story.

Since 2010, Bing has also powered Yahoo search and all advertising on the Yahoo search engine carried over to Bing’s platform. After an initial tiff and separation they got back together in 2019 with a new deal. Bing Ads then became the exclusive ads platform for both Yahoo and AOL search engines.

This means that optimising your site to rank well on Bing can also see it rank identically on Yahoo and AOL. This brings in potentially more of a unique audience from those searching on Google.

Even with Bing’s advantages what you do for SEO for Bing will also benefit your ranking on Google and vice versa. For an effective digital marketing strategy, use best practices to rank on any search engine will give optimal results instead of just focusing solely on Google.

With an exclusive audience waiting to be tapped into, who might not even use Google, you shouldn’t forget the Microsoft alternative.

If you would like to know more about how we would approach your SEO project you can contact us at [email protected]