Bing recently updated its webmaster guidelines and new perspectives emerged on how it ranks the overall content of webpages for sites across the globe .

In the latest release, an entire section focusing on the various factors involved in ranking content w.r.t Bing search has been incorporated .

We all know that Microsoft Advertising platform can be used by companies to avail paid services similar to Google Ads . It has also been stated that Microsoft based products and services are not provided higher visibility or prioritised in the search results.

Following are the few factors which plays a key role in ranking content

• Relevance: Mapping of content with user intent
• Quality & Credibility: Reputation of the author, details provided on the pages and the kind of information provided in terms of accuracy, context etc
• User Engagement: CTR (Click through rate) specific to links , pogosticking/dwell time, average time on page, reformulation of queries etc
• Freshness: Sites providing updated and new content on a regular basis are always preferred
• Location: Bing considers where the user is located (country and city), where the page is hosted, the language used, and location of visitors.
• Page load time: Faster load times for the pages would certainly help in better ranking
• Social Proof : Authentic Profiles/Accounts across social media providing latest updates, news would act as a potential source of information to influence & aid credence to the site

Things to Avoid

• Brands must refrain from using offensive statements , foul and derogatory language
• Copying content from other sites or resorting to plagiarism would lead to a downgrade in the rankings
• Automatically generated content or low value affiliate programs must not be encouraged
• Resorting to black hat techniques or malicious behaviour may have a severe impact and can hamper the prospects of the site
• Violation of any laws or regulations , non-compliance with acts such as ADA,DMCA, GDPR, CCPA can affect the reputation of the brand

General Recommendations

• Restrict usage of dynamic loading of resources – i.e. AJAX to limit the number of http requests and limit usage of JavaScript on large web sites
• Limit the number of pages on your website to a reasonable number and focus on consolidating traffic to pages that conveys value proposition to the end users

Best Practices For Images & Videos

Bing can extract information from images, captions, structured data, titles, and related text such as transcripts

• Use unique and original images/videos that are pertinent to the topic of the page
• Do not embed important text or information within images or videos
• Include descriptive titles, filenames, and text for images and video
• Choose high-quality photos and videos
• Optimize images and videos to improve page load times

New Attributes For Paid / Advertisement/User Generated Content Based Links

Use rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” or rel=”ugc” attribute to prevent the links from being followed by a search bot as a result they would not pass link equity

Final Thoughts

The crux of the algorithm still gives some weightage to keywords especially with regard to keyword / phrases matching in accordance to the on page content . It has evolved over a period of time and is tweaked regularly in a bid to align with the industry standards . Thanks for reading . Please feel free to share your comments and feedback .