Google is the behemoth of search engines and often dominates the SEO conversation. They outrank all other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and AOL by a landslide. With a net market share of about 86% in the US, it’s easy to see why Google is the primary search engine that SEOs focus on.
Here at Moose May, you’ll often hear us refer to Google when we are talking about SEO strategy. That is because while it is important to take Bing and other search engines into account, if you are optimizing for Google – the others should follow. Keep in mind this isn’t always the case, but for a majority of the time, this is true. Let’s dig in.
Google vs Bing – Ranking Factors
To help answer that question, let’s break down some of the similarities and differences between Google and Bing by taking a look at a few SEO ranking factors for both. The good news is that if you’ve been optimizing for Google, then most of these will apply to Bing as well.
Keywords
Google has been focusing heavily on improving search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and interpreting context from other websites. In simple terms, Google is using part machine and part artificial intelligence to take cues from user searches to provide better, richer results. They rely less on the exact match keywords and look at the overall picture instead. Create content backed by keyword research, but focus on topical relevance instead of exact match keywords.
Bing, on the other hand, is still playing catch up in this department. They are still working on broad-matching keywords, but recommend you use targeted keywords. Optimizing your website with good topic and keyword-backed content is key in both Google and Bing, but having exact match keywords will help rank better in Bing.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links on other websites that point back to your site. Both Google and Bing make it known they are big on trust factors. Both value high-quality links over quantity. While Bing places a slightly larger emphasis on the number of links you receive, you should always avoid bad practice link building to be trustworthy to both search engines.
Social
While Google has previously denied that social signals play a role in page ranking, they do value the brand authority overall. Bing has made it loud and clear that social signals are a key ranking factor and will display social media accounts in the search results. Bottom line: optimize and align your overall brand messaging using social media, and you’ll be set on both search engines.
There you have it. The bottom line is that Google is the most used search engine in the entire world. Here at Moose May, we focus on Google Search results far more than other search engines. Why? Because having a solid SEO strategy that focuses on meeting your customer’s needs is highly important. That coupled with a website that is optimized well, has unique and high-quality content, good user experience, and good brand authority is key. These things will help you no matter what search engine you use.