In July of 2010, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a 10-year partnership deal that would allow Microsoft’s Bing search engine to more effectively compete with Google. Bing has effectively taken over powering the Yahoo search engine leaving Yahoo to man simply the ad sales (for both search engines).
Changes & Benefits of the Bing/Yahoo Alliance for Users and Marketers
This alliance has brought about a number of changes from an internet marketing perspective as well as to the average user:
* both paid and unpaid search results have been ranking successfully on Yahoo, meaning that ad-driven results are now a more effective internet marketing strategy on this search engine platform.
* On the surface, Yahoo search engine remains the same to the average users, the Bing name is secondary. However, it’s actually Bing powering the search.
* Currently, the changes are only effective with English searches, but that’s expected to change in 2011/2012.
* SEO strategies focus primarily upon Google results with other search engines falling further down the priority list. Google has 65.8% of the US market, while Yahoo/Bing has 28.1%. SEO efforts have now become more important for “Yahoo” in particular, but now efforts only need to be directed at one search engine thanks to this partnership.
Factors that Dictate SEO Success on the New Yahoo
Some specific factors reported to play an important role with Yahoo/Bing include:
* Domain age – how long a domain has been registered.
* The amount of text on a page – 300 words or more on a page seem to have greater ranking success.
* Website vs blog categorization – websites typically outrank blogs
* Strong SEO titles – titles with strong keyword use significantly improve rankings.
* link out quantity – rankings are not hurt by outbound links.
MedNet can help you improve your web visibility with SEO strategies that will improve your position on Yahoo/Bing in addition to Google.
