While Google still holds the largest share of the global search engine market (with 64.8% according to comScore), Microsoft’s Bing is still trying to catch up. With a current 14.7% share of global searches being made through Bing each day, law firms and professional services firms looking to be found on search engines for targeted keywords should not rely solely on Google. And, indeed, we’re always pleased to tell a client we’ve helped get their website to the number one spot in Google AND Bing and other search engines for targeted keywords.

Getting to the number one spot on Bing

What helps a site rank well on Bing? As with Google, Bing’s search algorithm is constantly changing. Recently Bing published a post on their webmaster blog detailing different SEO factors which affect Bing search engine rankings. We’ve summarised these as follows:-

Crawlability

Can a crawler access your content? If not it won’t be indexed by search engines. This can be improved by using XML sitemaps and enhancing navigation on your website. The URL structure should also be keyword rich and not convoluted.

Site Structure

Does your website structure have strong functionality, encouraging link building? Linking both to external trusted sources and to other internal content helps provide a good user experience and, as a result, helps with search rankings.

Content Hierarchy

Is your site’s content hierarchy structured in a way that allows searchers to find what they’re looking for?  If it isn’t, keyword research performed either by your firm or by keyword research experts followed by implementation can greatly enhance content hierarchy.

On-Page Factors

Have you optimised the text on your site both in terms of the meta data and the visible content? Title tags, for instance, should be short (around 65 characters) and unique to the page, and meta descriptions should be utilised to their full potential also, but the focus should always be on having relevant, unique content on every page.

Content Production

Is your content compelling, relevant and unique for readers? If not, it may be time to load up the word processor and start sharing some better content. At Moore Legal Technology, we find that a great way to encourage this is for the firm to install a blog on the website, with lawyers and other legal experts updating it regularly with fresh content.

Link Building

When building links on external sources do you use targeted keywords in the anchor text? If so, this will increase the link’s perceived value to both users and search engines. Encouraging links by integrating social network icons is also to be welcomed. And the best way to get links is, as noted above, to provide excellent, unique content.

Ideas to be encouraged

In addition to the above, Bing also lists several other items which they encourage from webmasters. These include the establishment of RSS feeds, use of relevant tags, improvement of user experience (“UX”) and integration with relevant social media channels.

Ideas to be discouraged

Bing also give a few examples of practices to be avoided to steer clear of penalisation in the SERPs. These include cloaking, buying into “like farms” and “link farms” and the production of duplicate content.

Conclusions

The lesson from this is that you should focus more on maintaining a solid, dynamic site, with updated content that can be read and shared easily across the web. The good thing about this for law firms and other professional service organisations is that their lawyers and professionals are capable of producing excellent, shareable content. Working with expert web designers, your content can be optimised to ensure that the best possible search engine rankings, such as those in Google and Bing, should follow.