We’ve officially entered October, and the clock has started ticking for businesses that usually start preparing for the crazy in-person shopping season starting from Black Friday till December.

With COVID-19 safety precautions in place and the uncertain times we’re all living in, this holiday shopping season will surely be a completely new experience.

If you haven’t thought about it yet, now is the time you focus and strengthen your marketing plans; from keeping your website up-to-date to restocking online inventory, delivery, and anything else that you offer. 

The main goal for you would be to make things safe and easy for your customers to do business with you. Here’s how Google can help your business.

“To help retailers plan and respond this season, we have insights and resources available in our 2020 retail guide, and, in June, we surveyed global consumers to better understand how the coronavirus pandemic will impact their holiday shopping.”

Here are the three ways people plan to shop differently this year listed by Google:

• People will discover and buy online even more.
• People will plan ahead and do their research online before in-store shopping.
• People will look for safer, digitized ways of in-store shopping.

Google also notes, 

“Last year, 71% of holiday shoppers used three or more channels to do their holiday shopping, and 57% of shopper-reported purchases were made online. This year, we expect those numbers will grow, as over 70% of shoppers who plan to shop this season said they will shop online more for the holidays than they did in previous seasons, and a similar number said they would browse for gift ideas online and not in store.”

Plus, the desire to support and shop local is more this year.

“67% of shoppers said they plan to shop more at local small businesses.”

Which is why Google also announced a new focus on shopping ‘nearby.’

“Want to see an item in person before purchasing, or can’t wait for shipping and delivery? Whatever you’re looking for, whether it’s a new laptop for working from home, a baby jacket for fall, or a grill for backyard barbeques, Google makes it easy for you to see what’s available locally. Simply tap the Shopping tab, and select the Nearby filter at the top of the page or add “near me” to your search to view product options available from stores located near you.”

Google aims to take the guessing game out of the picture by offering customized recommendations to help small businesses reach their customer base wherever they are across Google Search, Maps, and Shopping.

Introducing Grow My Store

Google’s new Grow My Store is an automated retail store evaluator tool that allows you to get tailored tips if you sell products online.

Take a look at what the all-new Grow My Store promises to do:

• Boost your business with a quick and easy evaluation of your retail website.
• Strengthen your business by analyzing your retail site, getting an overall score, and offering detailed insights and recommendations.
• See how your site does against retailers/competitors in your sector.
• Identify areas of improvement to upgrade effectively.
• Provide access to personalized market and consumer trends to reach new customers.
• Grow with advice from Google’s database of resources and curated Google tools.

Although some of the tips may feel very obvious, it is these simple little things that one often tends to miss when they’re busy or stuck in a project. Make most of the Grow My Store tool by putting your retail site through it. Who knows, you might even end up with some top tailored tips that help boost your sales this year!

What You Can Do:

Review the post here, study the 2020 retail guide, and the recent enhancements to shopping search. After this, put your retail site through the new Grow My Store to get quick tips to maximize your presence throughout Google.

Alongside Grow My Store, email marketing can be crucial for your retail website’s success this year. Make the most of it to connect with your customers, let them know you’re open, what you have to offer, and provide enticements to help your customers support you in this important and different than the usual selling season.

The countdown has begun. Get to work now!

Google has come up with new performance metrics, specifically for Google My Business Insights. In their announcement, Google said, “Business Profile Performance reporting is moving closer to your profile on Search and Maps. You’ll be able to access more of the core profile metrics directly from your Business Profile.”

Google adds, “We start with interactions to let you know how often people have contacted you. More metrics will follow over the next months and will include detailed reports about searches and the number of people who saw the profile. After metrics are added to Performance reporting, the older versions of those metrics will eventually be removed from the Google My Business web and app platforms.”

Further, Google informs that performance reporting is currently available on Search and will soon be available on Maps. Data will be available for up to 6 months. You’ll be able to review your performance by selecting custom time frames, with interaction metrics updated daily and other metrics updated monthly.

If you want to review your performance reporting, follow the below steps:

• To review the new metrics from your Business Profile, go to Performance reporting.
• Make sure you’re signed in with the account you used to sign up for Google My Business.
• To find your Business Profile, search on Google for your exact business name.
• If needed, select View profile to manage your Business Profile.
• Select Promote Performance.
• At the top of the page, select a date range for your report, and click Apply.

Finding new features or attributes in Google My Business comes as no surprise. This has been happening for quite some time now, albeit without much fanfare from Google. Meaning, marketers are discovering these new features only as they stumble upon them while working with their clients.  

The latest addition to the long line of new features in Google My Business is the Video Conferencing option, which appears as ‘Connect in real-time, with video’ in the Home menu.

What This New Feature Brings to the Table

It is safe to assume that the video conferencing option is a part of Google’s initiative to help businesses survive the pandemic with more social distancing friendly alternatives. As of now, this option allows businesses to connect with their customers through Google Meet, Zoom, Skype and Webex.

Get Onto the Video Conferencing Wagon!

Depending on your business category, you may or may not be able to see this feature in your Google My Business profile. If the option’s available, it is highly recommended that you make the most of it.

All you have to do is, when the Stay Connected during COVID-19 prompt appears, activate the Conduct Business Online attribute. In order to help you set up quickly and easily, Google has uploaded a step-by-step guide.

You might also want to consider including a booking link from your existing booking system. In case you do not have one in place, sign up for a system that Google has partnered with or look into Reserve with Google integrations.

From February 2021, Facebook will be limiting the number of ads on a Page. These ads will run based on the highest month’s ad spend in the previous year.

The Improving Ad Performance Through Ad Volume Guidance sets the limits based on Advertiser Size as follows.

Advertiser Size test	Ad Limit Guidance
Small to medium sized Pages (advertising less than $100K in their highest spending month in the last 12 months)	250 ads
Medium to large sized Pages (advertising less than $1M in their highest spending month in the last 12 months)	1,000 ads
Larger Pages (advertising less than $10M in their highest spending month in the last 12 months)	5,000 ads
Largest Pages (advertising $10M or more in their highest spending month in the last 12 months)	20,000 ads

As per Facebook,

“Ad limit enforcement will roll out from february 2021 through Summer 2021. Advertisers can see when their ad limit will go into effect for each Page in Ads Manager and find additional enforcement details in the Help Center. Developer resources can be found here.”

Facebook has also claimed that many advertisers have already started noticing performance benefits after consolidating their ad setup, and you can too “learn more best practices for managing ad volume.”

Actionable Strategy

Visit this page to know more about Ad Limits per page and here to create and manage ads on mobile or desktop.

 

 

 

In July 2020, Google revealed how it plans to protect Google Chrome users from submitting insecure forms, beginning in Chrome M86. The search engine giant announced that the new update will warn users against completing forms on secure (HTTPS) webpages that fail to submit securely.

 

The idea behind this new development

Google says that forms on HTTPS sites that submit insecurely, a.k.a. “Mixed Forms” can pose a huge risk to users’ security and privacy. As per Google, any sensitive information submitted on such forms can be picked up and altered easily by malicious parties.

 

So what will happen to the insecure forms?

1. Autofill will be disabled. However, Chrome’s password manager that helps users input unique passwords will continue to work on mixed forms with login and password prompts.

 

2. Users will see a warning text. When users begin filling out insecure forms, a warning text will appear to alert them that the form is not secure.

 

 

 

 

3. Users trying to submit an insecure form will see a full page warning. This warning page will alert users of the potential risks and will ask them to confirm if they still want to submit the insecure form.

 

 

 

 

To justify these new measures, Google said that the current ones fail to effectively communicate to the users the risks of submitting sensitive data in an insecure form. Currently, the mixed forms are only marked by removing the lock icon from the address bar.

 

How will this affect your site?

Google is making it very clear to all the website owners out there that the time to fully migrate the forms on their sites to HTTPS is NOW! If any developer has questions, they should send an email at security-dev@chromium.org.

 

It has been quite some time now that Google has been giving us signs and indications to fully migrate our sites to HTTPS, which is not very difficult these days.

 

One thing is for certain, migrating your site completely to HTTPS should be on top of your to-do list right now. If your website is still in HTTP, which is not at all recommended, you can get in touch with us and our expert team will assist you with making your site and forms secure.

 

 

 

 

 

Recently, Google added the all-new Call Button to their business knowledge panels. Although there is no official word yet about the addition from the Search Engine Giant, it looks to be rolled out extensively, as it was very easy to find it on the web.

 

 

 

 

What’s Next?

With the introduction of the Call Button, desktop customers can easily click and call to connect with businesses. This could result in a plunge in your trackable incoming calls.

 

When we conducted a test ourselves, we found out that you could use Skype or a similar program to make a call while using a desktop. If you have your phone synced to your desktop, then it could push the call from there too! Before the launch of this new addition, GMB Insights could only track calls from mobile users. But now, we could very well see the rise of calls from desktops being reported as well!

 

 

 

 

Google just added new functions to its ‘access your Google My Business (GMB) listing’ feature in Google Maps and Search. Here’s what Google stated:

 

“Now you can create posts, reply to reviews, add photos and update business information right from Google Search and Maps.”

 

Though this feature of managing your business listing from Search has been in function since September 2017, it is now that businesses will be able to make suitable changes to their listings from Google Maps.

 

Take a look:

 

 

 

Besides adding these new functions, Google is also presenting new features that’ll be available on an upgraded merchant interface. These new features will offer “helpful recommendations” to help businesses enhance their Google presence while learning how the business performs. Here’s what Google had to say,

 

“Business owners and managers will see a revamped performance page with new customer interaction insights. This page will provide refreshed metrics on a monthly basis and will evolve over the coming months to share more helpful data to business owners.”

 

For now, the new functions are only available in English, but Google has said that they will “expand to other languages over the coming months”.

 

How to use it?

Sign in to the Google Account associated with your Agency/Business. To access these tools on Google Maps, tap your profile picture on the top right corner of the mobile app and select ‘Your Business Profile’. To update your profile on Google Search, find your business by name or search for ‘my business’.

 

 

Bing’s recently released, updated webmaster tools give you great new tools. Check out the new tools that we think are showstoppers here.

 

1. URL Inspection Tool – Just like Google’s URL Inspection Tool, this tool reports on the status of the URL from Bing’s perspective. But, there is one difference. Unlike Google, there is no focus on AMP. This tool gives you more overall usable data points. You can see the schema markup listed on the page, SEO tips like missing image alt tags when the URL was first discovered by Bingbot, and more.

 

Image Source: Bing Webmaster Tools

 

 

2. Robots.txt Tester – This tool tests your robots.txt file. Bing explains this tool as “Robots.txt Tester helps Webmasters to analyze their robots.txt file and highlight the issues that would prevent them from getting optimally crawled by Bing and other robots.”

 

3. Site Scan – This tool acts just like the typical scan tool. It allows you to scan your site for technical SEO issues. Though, it is a step away from Google’s tool offerings. Bing describes this tool as “Site Scan is an on-demand site audit tool that crawls your site and checks for common technical SEO issues. Fixing these issues will make your website search engine and user friendly. With this tool, you can improve your website performance not only on Bing but on other search engines as well.”

 

 

 

 

The tool is easy to use and also reports on all the typical parameters. The only issue with this tool is that the scan is very slow. So you will either get your results later that day, or it might even take the next day. Your results will be sent to you via email.

 

Actionable Strategy

If you haven’t used Bing’s Webmaster Tools yet, then we recommend you give them a try. All you need to do is, give a quick click of a button and a couple of seconds to import sites from Google Search Console. Bing has already announced that they are still updating these tools. So you can soon expect something more coming up. We will keep you updated.

 

 

 

 

Looking at the growing popularity of online retail shopping, Microsoft Advertising is now looking out for ways to help retail partners make the most of this change.

 

 

Here’s an announcement that they made last month,

 

“…the availability of free Product Listings, which allow you to show your product offers for free on the Bing Shopping Tab starting in the USA and soon rolling out to other markets — United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany.”

 

Steps to Enable Product Listings

• Customers that are already a part of Microsoft Shopping Campaigns do not require to take any action for participating. Microsoft Merchant Center automatically opts all the approved product offers.

 

• If it’s the other way round, you can simply create a Microsoft Merchant Center store, submit all the products that are eligible and make sure that they are approved. Once the Merchant Center store is successfully created, you’re opted-in to the free Product Listings offering.

 

• All the approved products get reflected in the free products listings section on the Bing Shopping Tab.

 

Things to Know

• Product Listings reporting will be available in Microsoft Merchant Center by this fall.
• To avail all the benefits of Product Listings, it is advisable to send a complete product feed, along with your entire inventory and more fields to provide a rich data source.
• Clicks from the Product Listings section within the Shopping Tab are free of cost.
• All products are required to –
• Abide by Microsoft Advertising policies and Product Ads policies
• Meet the product specification requirements (similar to paid ads today)
• To opt out of receiving this free traffic, you can click on Show Free Product Listings through the Settings page of your merchant center store in the shopping tab toggle.

 

Bing is also looking forward to partnering with more retailers in order to offer a wider selection of products.

 

Actions to Take

For more information, click here! You can send in your queries and feedback to Microsoft Advertising account manager or email directly to advertising-feedback@microsoft.com or you can reach out to us for assistance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google recently made an announcement that it’s Structured Data Testing Tool will be replaced with the Rich Results Tool that is newly out of beta.

 

This is what Google said in favor of the Rich Results Tool…

 

Here are some reasons the new tool will serve you better:

• It shows which Search feature enhancements are valid for the markup you are providing.
• It handles dynamically loaded structured data markup more effectively.
• It renders both mobile and desktop versions of a result.
• It is fully aligned with Search Console reports.

 

But this revelation does not seem to have gone down well with technical SEOs even when Google has assured that…

 

“…the Rich Results Test fully supports all Google Search rich result features.”

 

This could be because most SEOs like to see reporting on ALL Schemas and not just what qualifies as a Google ‘Rich Result’. And Google confirmed that this isn’t what the tool is designed for in the above statement.

 

For instance, Webpage and Article markup do not qualify as rich results, which is why it isn’t picking them up. So SEOs think that they are in a way losing a tool that served a different purpose than the one it’s being replaced with.

 

A page was tested on both the Rich Results Tool and the Structured Data Testing Tool. Below is the result of the Structured Data Testing Tool.

 

 

The result from the Rich Results Testing Tool is as follows…

 

 

 

What Can Be Done

 

In case you use the Structured Data Testing Tool, there is no need to panic. The Rich Results Tool has its own set of benefits to offer. When it comes to troubleshooting schema that qualifies for rich results and also allowing an easy preview of schema, the Rich Results Tool is quite effective.

 

Also, there are several other tools that can be used as an alternative to validate schema that is currently not been offered at Google rich results.

 

Listen to what John Mueller said on this, in this Google hangout, on the 21st of July. https://youtu.be/QPh3T7oemxM

 

The Structured Data Testing Tool will be still available as Google does not plan to take it out right away. However, in the long run, they plan to keep just one single tool instead of two tools. We will keep you updated on Google’s upcoming announcements until then you can think of something that can efficiently be used instead of the Structured Data Testing Tool when it will be eventually replaced.

 

 

 

 

 

Google recently launched the new Black-owned attribute to Google My Business on July 30, where relevant businesses can tag themselves. Just like the way we see Veteran-led or Women-led in the Highlights section of any business listing, this new attribute will also be seen the same way.

 

 

Here’s Google’s word on the newest attribute:

 

With this attribute, our goal is to make Search and Maps more inclusive and help support Black-owned businesses when they need it most.

 

“Everyone who comes into this store is welcome,” says Janet Jones, founder, and co-owner of the Detroit-based Source Booksellers. “For us, being Black-owned means serving the community we’re in.”

 

By adding the attribute, people using Google Search and Maps can see Source Booksellers is Black-owned, and easily extend their support by purchasing one of their products, leaving a great review and sharing their Business Profile with others looking for their next book.

 

What you can do: If this newest attribute applies to you or your clients’ business, start by reading Google’s full announcement as they’ve also introduced a collection of other business resources and training opportunities for Black-owned establishments and entrepreneurs.

 

 

Google has always tried on creating a social media platform that will generate the same or even more buzz than FaceBook, Instagram, etc. In what proves to be yet another shot at creating a social media platform that will gain adoption, Google has started introducing the all-new social profiles within Google Maps.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what Google said about the feature:

 

“Today we’re expanding this feature and beginning to roll it out globally. If a Google Maps user has shared photos, reviews or lists publicly, you can now follow them and get their recommendations, advice and updates delivered to your Updates tab in Google Maps.

 

So the next time you find someone sharing helpful photos of takeout menus, handy lists of your city’s most spacious parks or inspiring photos of local shops and services, you can keep up-to-date on all of their recommendations.

 

There will also be new topic filters on Google Maps profiles, so you can see topics and places people share about the most, like pizza, brunch, camping and parks. Whether they’re a coffee enthusiast documenting every last latte, or a hometown expert reviewing all things Perth or Phoenix, you can follow other Google Maps users with public profiles to get helpful recommendations about the places around you.”

 

Actionable Strategy: Google made it very clear that they will not make Google Maps profiles public by default. This means you decide if you want to or don’t want to share every review, photos, videos, etc.

 

If you are interested in checking out what the public profile has to offer, get started on building your following on Google Maps. All you have to do is, go the Maps app and tap Contribute > View your profile to make yourself followable. There’s also a restrict your profile feature that allows you to approve each follower. To know more about it, visit here.

 

We will only know if this new social aspect catches up with people or not as time passes. We believe that Google will have to aggressively incentivize people to get mass adoption, get ready for even more cool features soon. Until then, worry-less about early adoption!

 

 

 

Google’s Local Service Ads, is nothing but locally focused simplified pay per lead program, available for specific industries. Businesses need to go through a screening process where they will be submitting their insurance, license, certification, and degree details. Then they conduct a background check to verify the documents submitted by the business are accurate, and the company is in good standing of all the above.

 

Also, the business must have a verified Google My Business listing with a review score of 3.0 or higher.

 

As soon as all the necessary processes are over, the business is approved and brought into Google’s Local Service Ads (LSA) dashboard allowing your brand name to show up in the coveted LSA Carousel:

 

Google has been offering two different types of Local Service Ads –

 

1. Google Screened – It helps professional services like architects, lawyers, real estate agents, and tax specialists to build a trusted reputation online. It has been in beta until now.

 

 

 

 

 

2. Google Guaranteed – It includes almost all the home services industries like plumber, carpet cleaner, electricians, HVAC, etc. And the good part is services that cannot exceed $2000 per Google profile is backed by a money-back guarantee.

 

 

 

 

Google received immense success with the Google Screened program. And, now it’s taking it out of beta, expanding the business categories that can participate and rolling it out globally.

 

Actionable Strategy – Before you start, you need to know if your clients are local firstly, you will have to check if they are eligible to participate in these ads because the cost per lead is dramatically lower than other platforms and early adoption goes a long way. If you can be the first in your industry and region, that means low costs lead until everyone else catches on.

 

Once the competition grows, then your listing is currently ranked within the carousel based on your Google Reviews and your responsiveness to the leads. It’s necessary to manage your ad timings meticulously because you don’t want to miss answering your phone anytime you have your ads running. But you don’t need to worry much as the management of these campaigns is not complicated. The important thing is to manage them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other than using organic tricks, around 80% of local marketers are buying ads on Google. This figure is almost 10% more as compared to last year, as revealed by a MOZ survey of 1,300 local marketing agencies, small businesses and multi-location enterprises.

 

The survey also included questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 on marketing budgets. Majority of them (70%+) said that they were dealing with cuts. However, “74% believe that business-as-usual will return within a year of safety orders being lifted.” While local link building was somewhere in between, paid media, social and localized web content were more often cut than SEO.

 

When marketers were asked about the SERP feature that they were most focused on, the results were as follows:

1. Featured Snippets
2. Local Packs
3. Google Business Profile
4. “We don’t have an SERP feature strategy.”

 

Consistent with the zero-click narrative, 77% of respondents said they agreed with the statement that Google (Business Profiles) are “the new homepage” for local businesses.

 

Here you can see a local link building strategy with the highest ROI.

 

 

 

These are the Top Local SEO Tricks where marketers wanted to invest more.

 

1. Local link building – 18%
2. Local content development – 15%
3. On-site optimization – 13%
4. Technical analysis of ranking/traffic/conversions – 9%
5. Website design – 8%
6. Review management – 7%
7. Social media – 6%
8. Email marketing – 5%
9. Technical needs – 4%
10. Schema – 4%

 

 

 

As observed in the study, the highly competitive industries such as Automotive, Real Estate and Legal were “clamoring the loudest for devoted link building resources”. The top items on the local SEO tactical wish list, for enterprises, by comparison were:

 

1. Review management – 13.9%
2. Local content development – 13.2%
3. On-site optimization – 13.2%
4. Local link building – 11.1%
5. Technical analysis for ranking/traffic/conversions – 10.4%
6. Website design – 9%
7. Schema – 5.6%
8. Other Google Business Profile features management – 5.6%
9. Technical needs – 4.2%
10. Social media – 3.5%

 

When it comes to link building – content development, direct requests and sponsorships were the top 3 strategies with the highest ROI, as per the survey.

 

3/4th of respondents said that they believe “use of Google My Business profile features (e.g., Posts, Q&A) impacts rankings in the local pack”, which is partly true. Although some elements of GMB do impact local rankings, the local SEO consensus is that Posts and Q&A do not impact local rankings. Reviews and photos, by comparison, do not have an impact.

 

When asked about where local SEO resides within the organization, around 48% of the time, which is most often, it was located in the marketing department. Alternatively, it fell under the control of the business owner.

 

1. Account Managers – 15%
2. Webmasters – 9.1%
3. IT Department – 6.6%
4. Other groups – 3.4%

 

Most local marketers (68%) reported that they were using 2-5 local SEO tools, while 12% were using six or more, 20% used either none or one.

 

Local SEO is an essential part of digital marketing for the majority of U.S. businesses that have a physical presence or a service area. If you are looking to optimize your local presence, do get in touch with our experienced personnel for assistance.

 

 

 

Google My Business’s Messaging feature allows users to directly message businesses from their Google Maps listing and has been a mainstay for quite some time, but its use has been merely unsatisfactory. Businesses are required to use the GMB App to utilize the feature, but management between staff members becomes hard. There were no solid plans to make updates to the feature, up until the pandemic.

 

These times have been tough for people and businesses as they continue with their lives from a distance. The need for digital communication has spiked unlike ever before, making it a main priority. This desperate need for effective communication has led to Google rolling out some of the very best, user-friendly upgrades to their otherwise inert Messaging feature. Here is Google’s word on the upgrades:

 

 

 

 

“Today we’re expanding Business Messages in Maps and Search to support all kinds of businesses, and giving them the ability to integrate Business Messages directly with their customer service platforms. Business Messages provides brands a comprehensive messaging solution across Android devices, and through Maps on iOS. To improve connections with customers, we’ve recently introduced new smart replies, visual product carousels, and unique welcome messages. There’s also a smooth transition from automated replies to a customer service agent, so that it’s not disruptive when the customer messages a business.”

 

Basically, this upgrade from Google works very similarly to the website chat feature that is used by several customers and businesses. Take an in-depth look at the latest additions made to the feature:

 

New Smart Replies – Much like your site’s chat feature, there are several options to provide automated support before anyone from your team steps in. It functions like an FAQs system, where you can send in your questions or click within the carousel, after which your team can come in and take over the conversation seamlessly.

 

 

 

 

Visual Product Carousels – As the name suggests, this feature enables you to showcase the various products you have in store to the customer.

 

 

 

 

Unique Welcome Messages – With this feature, you can customize welcome messages for your customers to see. This feature allows businesses to shine through and establish their brand presence online!

 

Enhanced Images – Images play a crucial role in our buying decision, and this new feature showcases images along with URLs.

 

 

Actionable Strategy – We would highly recommend using Google My Business Message feature. It is not only free to use for now, but Google will be regularly integrating more of its top features for greater user experience. Now is the time to make most of the platform!

 

To know more about Business Messaging, click here. The message system now integrates with some of the best customer service systems, giving you the freedom to manage the complete process on your website rather than completely within Google’s system. Check out the list of partners here.

 

If you wish to get started with any of the partners listed above, reach out to Google about it here. Or else, you can simply log into your GMB listing and select the messaging option on the left-hand menu. Make sure to download the app to use it!

 

 

With an aim to help businesses to better serve users limited from in-person transactions due to COVID-19, Google recently introduced the following four attributes that now appear in a business’s knowledge panel.

 

• Online Care
• Online Appointment
• Online Estimates
• Online Class

 

Here’s How to Add These Attributes to Your Google My Business Listings:

 

Businesses can add any attribute that is relevant to their business. Follow the below steps to add new attributes to your Google My Business listing.

 

Login into the Google My Business listing that you would like to edit.

 

Then click on Info in the left-hand menu.

 

Now scroll down to Add Attributes and click on Edit.

 

 

 

 

Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines, which have remained the same since 2012, were recently updated. The updated guidelines detail the changes they have made to the search engine and what the modern search results look like.

 

The Updated Document Shares How Bing Ranks Content

 

The 2020 version of the Webmaster Guidelines consists of an entire section that tells us how Bing ranks content. The main ranking factors mentioned by Bing are as follows:

 

1. Relevance: It refers to how closely the landing page content matches the intent behind a search query. Semantic equivalents such as synonyms and abbreviations are also taken into consideration.

 

2. Quality and Credibility: In order to evaluate the page itself, Bing considers factors such as the author’s or site’s reputation, the level of discourse, the completeness of the content and transparency of authorship.

 

3. User Engagement: To determine user engagement, Bing considers factors such as:

• Did users click through to search results for a given query, and if so, which results?
• Did users spend time on the search results they clicked through to or did they return to Bing quickly?
• Did the users adjust or reformulate their query?

 

4. Freshness: Bing generally prefers “fresh” content, meaning sites that consistently provide up-to-date information.

 

5. Location: Bing also considers factors such as where a user is located, where the page is hosted, the language used, and the location of the other visitors.

 

6. Page Load Time: Bing considers slow page load time as poor user experience and hence, prefers faster page loads.

 

Generally, the characteristics of the goods or services do not affect how Bing ranks a site unless the content is potentially offensive or harmful to the users. Also, sites that promote methods of suicide or purport to sell opioids or other potentially harmful drugs may get demoted by Bing.

 

What You Should Do Next

 

Bing’s updated search guidelines are a quick 10 minutes read and it is highly recommended that you take the time out to go through it. If you are a pro in SEO then you will note that unlike Google, Bing admits that User Engagement is an important ranking factor.

 

If you happen to know anyone who is serious about marketing a website or is working on a website, ask them to go through the document as all the details shared here are must-know information.