Search engine optimization has been a common strategy for growing online brands for more than two decades. Over this time, the details and methods involved in boosting search engine visibility have changed, with even the primary search engines being targeted shifting over time. In today’s search engine world, Google and Bing are the two prime targets for SEO efforts.

While Google gets most of the attention, it is important to remember the influence that Bing has on brand visibility as well. Garnering anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of market share depending on the exact niche, Bing is a worthwhile search engine to target for many brands when factoring in competition and ease of ranking.

The two differ from each other in some pretty important ways: let’s look at them today so you can be prepared for any future SEO efforts.

Social Signals

Many SEO enthusiasts who target SERPs on Google understand that social media has no direct correlation with search rankings or PageRank. Google has at various points outlined its rationale for this, but to many, it simply doesn’t make sense. After all, if a brand is generating a massive amount of organic attention on social media and said posts can be found via search engines, why shouldn’t they factor into rankings?

With Bing, social signals are a relevant aspect of SEO and do influence how well your pages rank. While lacking a social media presence may not directly harm your rankings on Bing, the added boost that social media can provide to your brand’s rankings makes it a necessary component of SEO. Ultimately, most brands cherish the fact that increased social media activity can positively impact their visibility on Bing.

Backlinks

Building links across the internet that point to your website is just good practice and has multiple benefits. From a sheer traffic standpoint, other websites pinging links to your pages can provide one key benefit: additional traffic to your website. High-quality links that are earned can help further diversify your traffic flow and protect you from sudden algorithm changes that might temporarily nerf your search visibility.

Google places a considerable amount of emphasis on backlinks, making it a must-do aspect of SEO for ranking in its SERPs. With Bing, however, there is less emphasis on the practice. This can be quite beneficial for newer websites and brands in particular, as they generally will not start off with the same advantages as more established brands with respect to earning links from other websites.

Bounce Rates

Search engines are constantly aiming to provide the best and most relevant information to their users via their search results. All of these complex algorithms are built around the premise of serving users with exactly what they want. As such, search intent is incredibly important for both Bing and Google.

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who land on one of your pages via search results but who quickly leave. The higher the percentage, the more irrelevant search engines will believe your page and/or content to be, thereby affecting your visibility in results. While both Google and Bing emphasize relevance and have dozens of ways to assess it, bounce rates in particular are more influential via Bing. As such, lowering bounce rates for pages is much more crucial when targeting Bing results.

Most aspects of SEO are quite similar when targeting both Bing and Google search engine results pages. However, there are some key differences. By knowing how bounce rates, backlinks and social signals are treated differently on the two platforms, you’ll be better equipped to develop strategies that ensure you’re pinging links in as many results as possible on both search engines.