Ajay Kumar Singh

Microsoft’s MSN to Bing gamble is paying off. Bing’s market share has reached into double digit for the first time.

There is not much new in Bing. “Bing is a new chassis with same old engine”. What Microsoft did was to give it a new name, new face and decorate it with some interesting thing to make it look like new “stuff” and they topped it up with publicity to push it as a new search engine.

The presentation is attractive, well much more attractive than Google’s simple (boring) look.

I like the way they display the background image and stuff in some interesting facts at various spot.

The footer also displays some interesting articles from wiki.

However all of above are kind of distraction for searchers. Whenever I go to search for something I get deviated by other links. No wonder why Google still enjoys the No.1 position because of the most simple fact that it is just Search Engine.

I wish Bing was just as Google – Search Engine. However Microsoft never gives up in stuffing in as much elements of their network as possible in almost all of their services and which ultimately becomes a flop show.

Search Results

It seems more or less Bing displays the same result as Google. A search for my own name Ajay Kumar Singh on Bing shows this blog as No. 1, same as it shows on Google.

Bing favors its own community and if you have signed up in community then it might shows up details from there as well. I’m signed up for Community and it shows my profile page in the first page for my name search.

Bing’s country specific search is not so relevant and not as good as Google’s one. I searched for keyword SEO to display searches from UK only and couldn’t find my business website in top 10 where as it is on top 10 on Google for UK search results.

New Features

Bing has added some of new features. For instance on the right side of title you can see the latest posts from the blog.

What lacks

Bing doesn’t allow to display more than 10 results per page until and unless you login and change the it from the account settings. in Google you can exactly change it to display up to 100 results per page without logging into account. I use this feature quite heavily for my SEO work and I wish Bing could also provide this feature.

Domain name search doesn’t work. For instance if you type swamiseo.co.uk it will not display any result and it would rather suggest swamiseo keyword. In Google you would see the pages which link to swamiseo.co.uk

Country specific searches

Bing simply doesn’t show relevant result in country specific searches. Well it is still in Beta so we can’t expect all the features in it. Lets see when it builds up enough capability to show localized searches.

Image Searches

Image search in Bing is not as improved as it is in Google. Bing displays Image search results in iframe which is nuisance. It also doesn’t show the source of image until and unless you hover over the image.

Image results in Google are much better, simplified and display relevant information.

It seems bing image indexing is not sophisticated enough to build up a large database of images. Bing displays images from well known and big websites rather than well optimized small websites.

What is Good

Ever wonder why Google shows wiki in the top of search result for any keyword which has got an entry in Wiki? It is just sheer insanity.

Let me explain with an example. Visit Google.co.in and enter keyword Laptop and see the result. Google displays news items (useless) followed by Wiki (another useless result). When someone types keyword Laptop he is not interested in Google News or in Wiki, all he wants is to find out the latest laptops and probably to buy it.

Google loves Wiki.

Bing doesn’t love wiki so it doesn’t show up all the time.

Bing has to improve the search result display a lot to match with Google’s search. It shows Wiki which is completely irrelevant for the searched keyword.

Attracting more traffic to website whether it is business website, corporate website, ecommerce website or affiliate website has been always challenging task. This is not because it is difficult but because there are more websites like yours on the Internet and competition is getting tougher day by day.

Even if your website appear in the Google Top 10 there is no guarantee that it will generate a good traffic.

So what is the trick?

What is the secret behind attracting more traffic?

Well there are may ways in which you can attract more traffic to your website and I’m revealing the secret below.

Web Design

Believe it or not it is true that a poor web design can not attract visitor even if it appears on Google Top 10. I’ve personally observed it for many such websites which started with simple design achieved Google Top 10 ranking but didn’t attract much traffic and as soon as they got a good web site design they started pulling traffic.

I started a business website which was pretty simple in web design and not attractive even though I have done enough SEO to bring it in Google top 10 for main keywords. In the initial days it was not attracting much traffic and I used to get just less than 100 unique visitors per day.

After few months of its launch I decided to completely redo the web design and got a very attractive Web 2.0 design for this website and within 1 month of launch with new web 2.0 design this website not only attracted more than 1000+ unique visitors but also generated a lot of business and revenue for me and still continues to do so.

Web Design has been always ignored by people in favor of other methods such as Link Building, Advertisement and Social Media Optimization. But as I explained above am attractive website design can also increase the traffic and keep your visitors hooked up to it.

Search Engine Optimization

It is well known fact is that a website appearing in Google Top 10 attracts 70% more traffic than ones which appear on page 2 onwards. And a website appearing in Google Top 3 attracts 80% more traffic than those appearing anywhere between top 4-10. So the conclusion is you would like to in Google Top position in order to attract more traffic to your website.

SEO is big topic and it can’t be described in one post or even in a book. However I can describe some of the most basic SEO techniques which you shall always keep in mind for optimizing websites for search engines.

1) Content/Website Optimization

Content is the King.

Always write relevant, interesting and dynamic content which is optimized for Search Engines. Keep main keywords in mind while writing content. Keep revising the content till you have reached to the perfection.

Most often people optimize only the home page of website and completely ignoring the other pages. Each and every page in your website is important and contributes towards improving overall ranking of your website.

2) SEO Reports

You should get a good SEO Consultancy firm to prepare a comprehensive SEO report for your website in order to optimize all pages of your website.

A good SEO report is also needed to keep an eye on your performance against your main competitors.

3) Link Building

Link building is one of the most important aspect of SEO Optimization. You must be careful in link building and should avoid linking from irrelevant websites, link forms and certainly don’t get involved in link buying. Always rely on Organic SEO.

4) Blogging, Article Writing, PR and others

Blogs are excellent platform to create dynamic content and get instant traffic. Articles are another way to get relevant and contextual links. PR is good for your business websites and may not be relevant when you are not a business.

Mere blogging again can’t guarantee you traffic. You need to promote blog in order to attract traffic. Blog promotion is again tricky and requires extra effort and some investment.

The above are some of the SEO guidelines, as I said SEO is a massive task and you should certainly consider engaging a good SEO Company for all your SEO activities.

Social Media Optimization

Social Media is now the present and future of World Wide Web. The advantage of SMO is that your website gets instant exposure and sometimes within few minutes of SMO your website will be populated in all social networking websites thus brining more traffic instantly.

However SMO is not limited only to bring instant traffic but it can be leverage to keep your website popular in social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo and others.

Social Bookmarking

The Social Bookmarking revolution started by Digg still continues and it is one of the most popular way to get instant traffic to your website. On average a top story on Digg can attract more than 10,000 unique visitors per day which is by far massive and requires almost no investment.

However not all websites can be made popular on digg and other social bookmarking websites. Blogs/news stories are the best to promote on social bookmarking websites.

Above are just some of the basis online marketing strategies to get traffic. I would try to discuss other methods of getting more traffic in future.

Keep tuned…