By now I’m sure you’ve heard about Microsoft and Yahoo coming together. It wasn’t a buyout, as some prominent analysts had anticipated, although that might yet happen. But, the upcoming merger of the number two and three search engines, Bing and Yahoo, is a stunning development in the world of Internet business. Just think about these imminent changes.

1. Up to now, most SEO companies and website owners have focused on getting good rankings on Google, because nearly 85% of online searches are done on Google. With Yahoo and Bing sharing the new Bing search technology, they are very likely to take significant market share from Google. Thus, Yahoo and Bing can no longer be ignored.

2. Those with higher current rankings on Yahoo than on Bing will need to invent a way to improve their rankings or replace the traffic they will lose Bing begins powering the Yahoo search.

3. Website owners whose sites are ranked higher on Bing than Yahoo can expect significant increases in traffic. For instance, one of my sites comes up on page four of Yahoo for “online degrees“, but comes up on page one of Bing for the same term. Since “online degrees” is searched approximately 500,000 times a month, my site will get a significant boost.

4. Because the Yahoo- Bing partnership will almost surely boost traffic on Yahoo, advertisers looking for high volume pay per click advertising campaigns will now find Yahoo- Bing a more attractive advertising option.

5. With the increased competition the Yahoo- Bing partnership will produce, there may be an incentive for Google to lower advertising rates and/or become more aggressive about reducing click fraud. Advertisers will benefit.

6. SEO companies will soon tout services focused on raising search engine rankings in Yahoo- Bing. Smart website owners will react with appropriate cynicism.

If you own a website, I suggest that you do what I am doing.

1. Analyze the ranking of your most important keywords in Yahoo and Bing. If you find lower rankings for some in Bing, take two steps. Write and market some articles which include those keywords, and create additional website pages which are optimized for them.

2. Resist the temptation to spend money on “special” Yahoo- Bing focused SEO campaigns. Remember that Bing is a new search engine and not much is yet known about its ranking algorithms.

3. Be aware that the same criteria still determine your search engine rankings; content, site structure, and inbound links. Focus on those factors and your efforts will be rewarded by all search engines.

In summary, all you have to do is analyze and adapt, and you will be fine.

No related posts.

Tags: B, business, e, i, Internet Business, m, marketing, n, o, online business, online marketing, s, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO, u, w, website marketing, website promotion

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.