Home arrow MSN Optimization arrow Bing Local Basics
MSN OPTIMIZATION

Bing Local Basics
By: Terri Wells
  • Search For More Articles!
  • Disclaimer
  • Author Terms
  • Rating: 4 stars4 stars4 stars4 stars4 stars / 6
    2012-01-31

    Table of Contents:
  • Bing Local Basics
  • Be Eye-Catching

  • Rate this Article: Poor Best 
    SEARCH DEVARTICLES

    TOOLS YOU CAN USE

    advertisement

    Bing Local Basics


    (Page 1 of 2 )

    You run a local business, and you claimed your Google Local listing so searchers would see your website. That's a start, but with Bing and Yahoo together holding more than a quarter of the search market in the US, you're still leaving money on the table. Fortunately, you can easily get onto Bing Local by following a few simple steps.

    As Chris Silver Smith explains at Search Engine Land, Microsoft's Bing Business Portal features a “beta” interface through which you handle your business details. It replaces the Bing Local Listing Center. If you want some information about the service before adding your business, you can read the FAQ.

    To star using the interface, you'll need to find your listing. Bing Business Portal will ask you to enter your business name (required), address, city, state, and zip code, and then press the search button to see if Bing already has information about your business. If you enter only your business name, be aware that Bing will insist that you also enter either your city AND state, or your zip code.

    Once you've entered this information, Bing will return a listing to you if it finds one that matches. You can then click the claim button. If it doesn't, you can add a new listing. Smith notes that “having a business owner claim a listing helps to validate the information and establish that the business is active, helping increase 'trust ranking' factors.” Remember that search engines hate to show stale information to searchers – and businesses fail all the time. If a business owner has claimed their listing, it may show the search engine that the business is active, and could lead to a more prominent position in the search results.

    Once you've claimed your listing, you need to check the contact information it displays. Make sure it's correct. At a minimum, it needs to include your name, address, and phone number, in addition to your website's URL. If you choose to include an email address, treat it professionally – check and answer the messages it receives at least once a day. Otherwise, customers will think you're ignoring them, and go somewhere else.

    Next, if you can, you should at least consider adding an image to your listing. Smith notes that for Bing Local searches, “higher-ranking businesses appear to more frequently have images associated with their listings!” He was careful to state that this could simply be due to the fact that listings with images are always claimed listings, and they could be ranking higher for that fact alone. Correlation does not equal causation, after all. Smith uses a Bing search on “intellectual property attorneys Chicago, Il” as an example. The first listing past the ads is a box with a map and five options; when I clicked through, I noticed that the top two and the fifth ones included images.

    As a potential customer, I think I'd be more inclined to take the next step with a business that includes an image. If users conduct a search on Bing Local (rather than a general web search), those images actually show up next to the relevant listings, drawing the eye and making you stand out. As a searcher, if I don't know any of the businesses listed in my search, and distance isn't a huge factor, I start looking for anything that catches my eye and makes it stand out. Including an image is one approach that can help attract eyeballs; there are others you can use as well.

    More MSN Optimization Articles
    More By Terri Wells

    blog comments powered by Disqus

    MSN OPTIMIZATION ARTICLES

    - Bing Local Basics
    - Personalized Social Search Still Years Away
    - Bing Turns Grinch for Cyber Monday
    - Microsoft AdCenter Now Supports Negative Exa...
    - Mozilla Releases New Version of Firefox for ...
    - Ballmer Blunt at Web 2.0 Summit
    - Bing Bleeding Billions from Microsoft
    - Bing Moves Strongly into Mobile, Social Space
    - Bing Gains Market Share, at Great Cost
    - Bing Gets Social With Facebook, Twitter
    - Bing Bar Features Bing Rewards, Maps, and Mo...
    - Bing SEO Analysis: A Comparison with Google ...
    - SEO for Microsoft Live Search (MSN)
    - Microsoft`s Live Search Patents and Algorith...
    - Using Freshness to Optimize for MSN
     
    SEO Chat Forums  
     RSS  Articles
     RSS  Forums
     RSS  All Feeds
    Contact Us 
    Site Map 
    Request Media Kit
    Write For Us Get Paid 
    SEO Weekly Newsletter
     
    SEO Tools
    Adsense Calculator
    AdSense Preview
    Advanced Meta-Tags
    Alexa Rank Tool
    Check Server Headers
    Class C Checker
    Code to Text Ratio
    CPM Calculator
    Domain Age Check
    Domain Typos
    Future PageRank
    Google Dance
    Google Keywords
    Google Search
    Google Suggest
    Google vs Yahoo
    Indexed Pages
    Keyword Cloud
    Keyword Density
    Keyword Difficulty
    Keyword Optimizer
    Keyword Position
    Keyword Typos
    Link Popularity
    Link Price Calculator
    Meta Analyzer
    Meta Tag Generator
    Multiple Link Popularity
    Page Comparison
    Page Size
    PageRank Lookup
    PageRank Search
    Robots.txt Generator
    ROI Calculator 
    S.E. Comparison 
    S.E. Keyword Position 
    Site Link Analyzer 
    Spider Simulator 
    URL Redirect Check 
    URL Rewriting 
    Privacy Policy 
    Support 


    © 2003-2012 by Developer Shed. All rights reserved. DS Cluster 9 - Follow our Sitemap
    Popular SEO Chat Topics
    All Tutorials & Tools
     
    SEO Chat is sponsored by:
    Close this Sponsor Message