We expect Bing to increase its global market share over coming next few years. Hence, it is very much essential to target your business on Bing, to gain that 15% traffic. As Bing powers Yahoo, who has another 15 % market share, there is a possibility to attract 30% visitors.

One can easily track their site performance through Bing webmasters tool. Some of their main features are:

Traffic Summary

Traffic summary displays 6 month history of traffic and search query performance. It provides great insight into top performing keywords for your site. The data is drilled down into impressions, clicks, CTR’s. Average Search Position & Average Click Position. Bing has also included Yahoo traffic stats, into this.

Page Traffic Report

The Page Traffic report shows the same charts as the Traffic Summary page with the exception of the bottom chart, which shows page level metrics.

Index Explorer

There is a great feature called Index Explorer, where we can block specific pages or directories from the Bing index. You can block the cache of pages or entire directories with ease.

Submit URLS:

This feature allows webmasters to submit url’s previously not indexed. However, there is a limit of 50 URL’s submission per month.

Inbound links:

This section displays inbound links to your website. It details inbound links for specific page along with their anchor text. This is one of the most important tools to check site authority and see how your keywords are linked. They also provide an export functionality to download the data.

Deep Links:

These Deep Links are assigned to websites which are seen by Bing to be “authoritative” on the topic which they target. They are similar to Google site links.

URL Normalization:

It allows you to specify query parameters for Bing to ignore. This is useful when urls encounter parameter issues, which can lead to duplicate content issues.

Crawl Summary:

It shows total number of pages crawled, along with crawl error of the landing page for this category. You can review data for past 6 months.

Sitemap:

This is where you’d submit your sitemap to Bing. This is very useful to inform Bing about your site’s structure and discover pages not indexed.

User Management:

It allows webmasters to grant admin, read/write or read only access to other users for their site.

SEO Tip #3

If there’s one catch-22 in the SEO game, then having a high-ranking, fully optimised search result that is right at the top of Google but is not getting any clicks is it.

This problem normally comes about because a business has spent so much time optimising their page full of keywords that when their listing appears in Google or one of the other search engines, their result is just a mash of keywords.

Having your website ranking highly is one thing, but actually getting users to click on it is another.

The trick then is to optimise your site well whilst still keeping your listing as an attractive result for the user.

One of the first ways to do this is to include your business name at the start of your listing. So instead of having ‘Neon Lighting Brisbane, Neon Lights, etc’ as your listing heading, you want to modify it so it reads ‘Search Strategy – Neon Lighting Brisbane, Neon Lights, etc.’ This allows your business’ listing to still remain attractive to the user.

This logic is also followed through to the second and third lines of search engine listings, where it is important again to ensure your description is attractive to the user. Once again, simple things like capitalising appropriately and punctuation makes a big difference, whilst avoiding those unsightly keyword mashes.

And finally, having a primary domain name, rather than a free subdomain, makes a big difference to the appearance of your listing as it gives your business a professional look.

So the question then becomes, can anyone topple Google? In the late 90′s Yahoo! was the number one, but Google looked at Yahoo’s weaknesses and created a cleaner search engine that supposedly delivered better search results. But can anyone do it again?

Google continue to go from strength to strength, and their reach is unrivalled. Their advertising network includes AOL, Ask.com and now Yahoo and their recent acquisitions of DoubleClick and Youtube have only broadened their market.

With the much-hyped Yahoo! and Microsoft deal falling through, and Yahoo’s subsequent search marketing deal with Google, who is left to take on the giant of search? Let’s go through the main competitors:

Yahoo!

Currently sitting in a distant second in terms of both advertising and search query share, many claim that Yahoo’s search algorithm is actually superior to Google’s. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant, as the vast majority of users have spoken with their clicks and head to Google for its clean feel. The big thing that Google has over Yahoo is the way Google is able to separate out each of its products to keep that clean feel. Yahoo pack everything they offer into one homepage, which can make it hard to identify what their primary focus is. As a result, many users wonder whether Yahoo’s search is being given the focus it deserves. Yahoo will certainly remain profitable, as they have a loyal fan base that swear by it, but I just can’t see them storming the Google fortress, particularly now they are relying on their ad network.

MSN/Live

If Yahoo is a distant second, then Microsoft’s Live Search is back an eternity in third place. Again, however, there are those out there who believe Microsoft’s search to be better, but I am a definite sceptic on this one. For Microsoft to really succeed in search they need a massive overhaul, and massive overhauls are not really Microsoft’s style. More than likely Microsoft will just let Live run its course, as it doesn’t really seem to have the desire to be number one in search, or else it probably would have put more emphasis on it’s deal with Yahoo rather than letting it slip by the wayside.

AOL, Ask, etc

The old players in the market. Most of these engines still get a decent run of traffic, but most are also relying on Google advertising deals to keep them profitable. These guys are not real challengers for the crown.

Mahalo

Mahalo is an interesting one. Mahalo is Hawaiian for thank you, and the premise behind this start-up is that it is the web’s only human-powered search engine. That is, its search results are not driven by algorithm’s but by human generated results pages. To me it seems like Wikipedia and Dogpile rolled into one, as the user is able to search all the various other engines if Mahalo does not have a page created. I don’t think the concept of a human-powered search engine can work, particularly when it comes to updating it constantly at the speed of web. Wikipedia works but I don’t see Mahalo taking off. It is useful however, if you want to search all the major search engines (and Wikipedia, Youtube, Flickr) all in one go. Other than that I don’t see it ever matching Google. Google’s algorithm’s refresh daily, which is almost impossible for a human-powered search engine to match.

Clusty

Another meta approach to search. Just like Dogpile, Clusty attempts to rank results by aggregating results from other search engines. Once generated however, Clusty clusters results together into categories of results. This is a useful tool but won’t have Google shaking.

Other Small Start-ups

Quintura, Blinkx, Powerset, Kosmix, the list goes on. All these players however, are only targeting tiny market niches, market niches that Google could quite easily swat away with one extra feature to their own search results. The other problem most of these smaller players have is they lack the resources to operate their own search algorithm’s and many of the newcomers rely on refining a Google search.

The Verdict

Here’s the problem as I see it for the other players attempting to usurp Google; all of them either rely on Google’s search is some way or are targeting niche markets that Google could themselves cover by throwing a few million at a new Google product.

Google have already done this with email. Google took a search-based approach to internet-based email and eroded Microsoft’s Hotmail monopoly in a flash, so these small niche players had better watch their back. If Microsoft can be beaten so easily, where does that leave the little guy?

But all the big players (including Yahoo thanks to this new deal) are relying on Google in some way either for search results or search advertising. All, that is, except Microsoft. Microsoft’s Live is the one major search engine out there not dependent on Google’s algorithms or advertising dollars.

Over the last few years Google has continually stripped away Microsoft’s stranglehold on all things digital, and maybe the time is right for the old dog to get angry and strike back.

Alas, however, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen…

What’s wrong with this?

Well, the most common problem that emerges from this is that these businesses tend to blow thousands of dollars on websites that are visually stunning, but don’t convert into sales. Too many businesses then put this down to the “internet being a fickle thing” or “our industry is not set up to support web sales.”

The actual reason why these websites fail is because they have not been strategically designed.

Web designers are not web strategists or strategic business consultants, and while they are great with the flashy components of your site, they are not business strategists.

Issues such as usability, navigation, search engine performance, and most importantly, conversion to sales, are not a web designers forte. This is where a web strategist steps in.

A web strategist, such as Reload Media, takes you through all of these elements and more BEFORE you see a web designer, ensuring that by the time you walk into a web designers office, you know exactly what needs to be done and the entire process is both time and cost efficient.

So what exactly does a web strategy company like Reload Consulting do?

To begin with, they determine from you what “Aims” you have for your business in terms of online sales. From there, they work with your business to develop a “Strategic Web Plan” which can be taken directly to a web designer, ensuring you don’t waste your dough on a website that doesn’t earn a crust of sales. These web strategy companies use industry knowledge gained from years of experience to assist you with all elements of planning your website.

You might be thinking that this all seems like a lot of work, after all, it is just a website. But think back to how much time you spent developing your business plan, and how much time you spent searching for retail or office space, the sign out the front, and the marketing campaign.

Your website is essentially just like another retail space, only it operates in its own medium that requires new strategies and marketing ideas. And just like your physical store, if customers cannot find their way to or around the shop, get help when needed or be able to make the purchase decision, then the investment to open that new space is wasted.

Our aim is to provide you with practical and timely advice about all things related to SEO or Search Engine Opimisation. This will allow you to make informed decisions about your business online.

SearchStrategy.com.au aims to supply you with blog topics on all facets of your internet campaigns including search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), web strategy, usability and so much more.

Written by a Brisbane-based team of web strategists, our blogs are informative with up-to-date developments direct from the wide world web.

Our job depends on our ability to keep informed about every change to a search engine’s algorithm, ranking equation, keyword trends and everything else that is search strategy, making Search Strategy the difinitive voice for web strategy.

Feel free to browse our blog articles and make comments as you feel.

Search Strategy is a part of Reload Media – one of Brisbane’s leading Search Engine Optimisation companies.