Following the finalized Yahoo-Bing Merger last April, many of us have been carefully watching the Bing search machine to see how it stacks up to Google for our law firm SEO. Predictions are rolling in that Bing will continue to gain popularity over the next few years for a variety of reasons. First of all, Bing is on a long-term strategic plan, meaning they care less about next year than they do about the next five—or ten. Bing is heavily investing in search, and focused on improving relations with in-house SEO teams. Just as Google’s algorithms have improved over time, Bing’s innovations will also bring about positive changes. Because some search engine users are beginning to see Google as a greedy, ever-more commercialized business, Bing may be benefitting from the comparison—and so may your law office websites.

Bing’s Webmaster and Maps

It can be a problem to get new sites indexed, and Bing can be especially slow to index a new site, especially in the beginning. You may see only part of your lawyer website indexed at first, which can be detrimental to any new site’s success. The good news is that the Bing webmaster center has a specific area which allows users to submit their own XML sitemap which in turn lets Bing crawl your attorney website more quickly. Bing has really been “one-upping” Google when it comes to providing an online map service. It is expected that if Google doesn’t get in the game quickly that Bing’s impressive beta map will steal the market share. Make sure your law firm’s physical address is listed on the Bing maps so you can be more readily found.

Target Long Tail Keywords

Bing has a “related searches” feature which assists users in narrowing down their search by (politely) suggesting more specific phrases they might want to try. This makes it easier to be found using long tail keywords. Should you be unfamiliar with the long tail concept, keywords can basically be split into either short tail keywords or long tail keywords, or, more simply, broad keywords or narrow keywords. A long tail keyword tends to target the less-competitive niche markets rather than the immensely competitive broad keywords. A long tail keyword for your law office websites could be “Denver personal injury attorneys” rather than the short tail version of “Denver attorneys.” Understandably, “Denver attorneys” would easily have 30 times as many competitors as “Denver personal injury attorneys,” however the short tail version would get more searches each month. If you wonder why anybody would want to target hundreds of keywords which bring only small traffic, the answer is that there is less competition, which means the long tail keywords can bring you lots of traffic overall, which is why Bing is targeting these keywords.

Outgoing Links

If you use the search operator “linkfromdomain” on Bing, you will be able to see all of the pages that a given site links to; type “linkfromdomain:yourwebsitesname.com” into the search bar on Bing, and you will immediately see the quality and relevancy of the sites you are linking to. If your law firm website is having trouble ranking for a specific subject, you can easily use this tool to ensure the sites your firm is linked to contain the same subject or keyword. Don’t forget that many search engines, in effect, judge your law firm website by who you hang out with, or in the web world, who or what you are linked to.

Social Media and Bing

Bing is rushing to establish itself as the search engine to choose if you want to index social networks like Twitter or Facebook more quickly and, in fact, if you want to get a new attorney website page indexed fast, post a link to it on Twitter. Since Facebook’s deepest desire is to become the next Google, they have structured a deal with Bing which allows Bing to become the first search engine to show U.S. users which sites Facebook friends like. The companies have entered into an alliance arrangement in an attempt to best the giant, Google.  Both Bing and Facebook report they see future opportunities to surface people who are specific-subject experts.

As with Google search, Bing wants quality content, however links and competitive keywords will push your attorney website to the top of Bing’s search. Microsoft has a huge budget to promote Bing, meaning you will likely see at the very least, an early surge of Bing users. Will Bing go the distance? Only time will tell, however for the health of your law firm website, it is well worth your while to learn as much Bing SEO as possible. Bing represents legitimate competition to the best search engine of the day, so jump on the train before it leaves the station!