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June 2009. Microsoft launched its much anticipated “Google killer” of a search engine – Bing.com. Bing is the software giant’s answer to Google, the currently undisputed search kings that have dominated the search market for the best part of the last decade.

Before the launch of Bing.com, Live.com received 98% of its traffic through MSN rather than direct navigation so it’s no surprise that Microsoft are investing between $80m to $100m on branding and marketing their new search engine (sorry, decision engine).

One thing that jumps to mind is how strangely familiar Bing looks. The look and feel is most certainly Googlish, but why reinvent the wheel right? To add to this familiarity, results themselves seem to be very similar to the late Live.com results, rousing speculation that Bing is merely a re-skin of Live.

According to Microsoft, it’s best to think of Bing not as a search engine, but a decision engine. Bing will focus on four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.

While at the first glance it may not seem as though Bing is bringing anything dratiscally different to the search table, there are a couple of features which may snag the interests of the Google dependants in this world. The related searches on the left hand side of results pages may encourage further refined long tail searches.

Additionally, where video results are integrated, users can hover over the video thumbnail to see part of the video before clicking though. Bing search result listings also have an extend area which lists a brief snippet of the content within the destination site as well as top links within the site.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said in a statement about the launch: “Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find. When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

www.bing.com

PPC Myths:

- PPC ads will help organic rankings
- PPC ads will hurt organic rankings

Tag Myths:

- you must have a keyword-rich domain
- you must have keyword-rich page URLs
- heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
- you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular  you need to use keywords that are included in your page  content. It’s actually better to use the keyword tag to   include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you  don’t have in your pages.
- using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.

Content Myths:

- page copy must be a certain # of words.  but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
- that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
- that you must use a specific keyword density. Keyword density tools are ridiculous.
- that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
- that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don’t generally need to optimize for these – engines will find them on their own.
- duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

Design Myths:

- your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
- your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
- you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
- certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.

Link Building Myths:

- that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
- that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
- that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
- you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. The Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:

- that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
- that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won’t change your site rank.
- that you need to update your site frequently.
- frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
- that you need multiple sites. This won’t help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.
- that you need doorway pages. This is so 1995!

SEO Company Myths:

- that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
- that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
- that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
- that they have a “proprietary method” of SEO. They’re lying!
- that they have a “special relationship” with Google. Again, they’re lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies.
- that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

 www.wdsinternet.com