gregalbuto

M Posted 5 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

It’s hard to believe that the Bing search engine has been around for over 10 years now. As an alternative to Google and the default search engine for Microsoft products, Bing enjoys a respectable 36% US desktop search market and has a growing international search audience in the UK, France, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Spain, and more.

Google vs Bing Search Engines

Google sees 6.9 billion searches per day compared to Bing’s nearly 900 million searches per day. While the search engine giant surpasses Bing’s daily search volume by an enormous number, Bing has loyal uses even though Microsoft spends very little budget on marketing its search engine.

An advantage for Bing is that it is integrated with other Microsoft products. While many searchers use both Google and Bing to do research with, Bing searches come from more than just bing.com. Bing searches occur via devices using Windows 10. The next time you search using Windows 10, even though a Windows logo appears, you’re searching via Bing.

Bing also offers rewards for using Microsoft products. You can earn points and turn it into gift cards, sweepstake entries including $500 to Target, and give to non-profit organizations just for signing into your Microsoft account and using it for search purposes.

While there are differences, Bing and Google are pretty similar. Bing offers “snapshots” which are short snippets of information while you’re searching that appear without having to fully search or click your query. Google offers a similar feature with “now on tap.”

Another similarity between the two search engines is what Bing refers to as Deep Links. Deep Links are the popular pages from your site that appear beneath a top ranked SERP. Google refers to these as Sitelinks. Within Bing Webmaster Tools, you can manage your Deep Links in the following ways:

• Extend blocks. By extending your blocks on Deep Links, you will have increased your block expiration from the standard 90-day block.
• Delete blocks. You can choose to delete blocks at any time here.
• Export records. By exporting your Deep Link report, you can see a full record of your Deep Link blocks for your website.

Bing also offers Bing Maps, paid advertising options, and more that are similar to Google.

Google vs Bing Image Search

While Bing struggles to keep up with Google’s search market share, Bing image search is known for functionality and high-quality results. As image size becomes increasingly important for mobile optimization, Bing has adjusted their image search to immediately provide users with image sizes at first glance.

While both search engines offer similar image search experiences, but Bing’s plethora of filtering options (image size, aspect ratio, color, photo or illustration, type, facial features, date and license), pleasing user interface and reverse-image search functionality makes the perennial 2nd place finisher a strong candidate for your image-based searches. Google offers a simpler image search experience than Bing with many of the same features, compared to Bing’s more Pinterest-like layout.

Other Bing image search features include the following:

• Reverse image search. Using Bing’s Image Match, you can perform a more complex search using an image verses a query.
• Image-based product search. Using this search form, users or shoppers can upload an image in order to locate a better price for their products from other sites.
• Visual search. With visual search, you can search what you see by using your camera and the photos you take via your smartphone.
• Image trending. Here, you can simply find the images that are trending via Bing’s search engine.
• Integration. with Microsoft Office Bing is integrated into Microsoft Office including image search. You can use Bing via Microsoft Office to conduct searches through the software.

What is Bing Webmaster Tools?

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console and helps you keep track of your site’s performance, indexation, sitemaps and more. You can combine the use of BWT and BrightEdge's Data Cube, ContentIQ and other analytics tools to understand the overall health of your website. While one analytics software could help you gain a basic understanding of your site's health, leveraging a group of them together will give you the best overall grasp of where your site needs improvements.

The Reports & Data section of BWT can help you find your site’s activity including data for clicks, impressions, total indexed pages, and crawled pages. Submit sitemaps, check for crawl errors, and analyze the mobile friendliness of your pages using BWT. You can also find a deep dive of details on page traffic, top searched keywords in terms of impressions and clicks, and SEO reports which include info into where your site needs SEO work.

Gain Knowledge Into The Health Of Your Site

Other reports you can collect data from in BWT including the following:

• Page Traffic Report. This report will tell you how your individual pages are performing. Here, you can adjust date ranges to understand your data even more.
• Index Explorer. Using this report, you can understand exactly how Bing understands and reads your site including redirects, broken links, and more.
• Search Keywords Report. This report will open your eyes to which organic keywords are driving clicks and impressions to your site.
• Using SEO Reports. Bing uses 15 SEO best practices to determine page-level recommendations for you to consider correcting on your site.
• Using the Inbound Links Tool. You can use this tool to get a full backlink report.
• Crawl Information Report. If you’re wondering about what crawl issues Bing came across while crawling your site, this is the report you should dive into.

Bing, as a search engine, continues to become more popular amongst searchers each year. While Google is still the front-runner in preferred search engines, there’s no telling if Bing could surpass the search engine giant one day. With a clean look, several advantages over Google, and a growing international market, Bing is bigger than we think. As digital marketers continue to implement new content strategies and work to better SERP rankings, it’s important to keep Bing in mind. Google may be the front runner of search engines but grow your organic traffic by optimizing for Bing as well.

jpatrice

M Posted 5 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

How will 2020 be different?

So far, 2020 has been quite the year. The global pandemic has had a tremendous impact on each of us and its effects have been felt in how many companies do business. With the holiday season fast approaching, how can you be prepared during what is traditionally your peak season?

If you’d like to learn more about how this year will be different, be sure to check-out our full research report on 2020 Holiday Shopping. In the meantime, here's a sampling of what you'll learn.

In-Store Shopping: A thing of the past?

In July, Best Buy, Kohl's and Walmart joined Target in announcing they won't be open on Thanksgiving Day. While it’s unclear at this point if leading retailers will be sitting out Black Friday entirely, it’s likely to diminish the sales boost big box retailers get during the Thanksgiving weekend. Smaller stores will likely be shifting everything online in an effort to generate sales without relying on traditional foot traffic.

What should you do if your in-store experience is critical to your customer experience? Bring the in-store experience on-line. L’Oreal and The Home Depot’s app have had great success with their virtual reality strategies.

Will Cyber Monday be Bigger than Ever?

Most likely, yes.

With fewer Black Friday customers, self-isolating shoppers will be keenly focused on Cyber Monday deals.  

Additionally, the slower shipping times and inventory issues we’ve grown accustomed to during the pandemic are only likely to get worse during the holidays. With that in mind, it’s imperative that retailers communicate shipping situations early and often. Or, get ahead of the issue by focusing sales on products with large inventory.

Will Spending be Different?

While unemployment numbers suggest that spending will be lower than in previous years, some studies have shown that most consumers plan to spend the same as last year on gifts this holiday season.

This is attributed to the fact that spending in the service sector has seen the biggest drop-off during the pandemic. Spending on services has dropped 13.3% whereas durable and non-durable goods have seen more moderate decreases of 3%.

How to Embrace the Shift to Online

An impressive 60% of consumers have been shopping online more often since COVID-19, and of that group, 73% plan to continue after the pandemic. What digital marketers and SEOs have long known is finally coming to fruition - online shopping is convenient and easy.

With everyone working remotely, cross-team collaboration and coordination will be dramatically different than in the past. Digital marketers will need to manage campaigns differently and utilizing an enterprise SEO platform like BrightEdge will be beneficial to their success.

Build a Plan

As usual, start with Data Cube to identify key terms that work for your site and discover new keywords to focus on during the holidays. Be sure to evaluate search volume, the level of competition, and semantically related keywords while conducting keyword research.

If you have BrightEdge Instant, use it to identify keywords that are currently trending within your new holiday keyword group.  These terms will be critical to optimize now as the holiday season is starting earlier this year.

Finally, be sure to monitor your Share of Voice for this new keyword group to make sure you’re owning as much of the SERP real estate as possible.

Holiday Shopping Outlook

This year is going to be challenging for nearly every retailer. Some smaller shops that rely on the old “research online, buy offline” adage might not survive the season. Larger retailers will need to aggressively reinvest in ecommerce to endure. Armed with the information in this guide and your SEO platform, we hope your business doesn’t just survive but #thriveon this holiday season.