As you may have heard, ” Bing is quite a bit different from Google and Yahoo, both in the way it ranks pages and the way it presents results on the page.”  Personally, I feel the above average real estate agent should always use organic vs. contrived methods of reaching out to the search engines. I know there are two camps on this topic…I’m in the organic vs. “slipping in keywords at every turn” camp.

Writing to and for consumers is key, but being aware of how the search engines view what you are doing, is as important as being aware of which buttons to push (and not push) as to the seller of a home, even when you solely represent the buyer of that home. Organizing your best efforts, while incorporating some key principles for SEO, is something no REblogger can ignore. Though I seemed to get away with it for a long time 🙂

As Michael Learmonth’s article (linked above) points out, Microsoft’s Bing offers some unique opportunities to place in more than one category, video being the new frontier. He also points out that we can’t know what Microsoft itself does not yet know. Meaning whatever you do right now could be for naught…if Bing changes as it goes, which it likely will. Still, we all know from Google that “the early bird gets the worm”, and just in case, it is a good idea to try to implement a few things early on FWIW.

Michael’s article did not impress me nearly as much, as Rodney Mason’s 13 point “thoughts on optimizing bing” in the comments to Michael’s post, that makes you want to pack up and move to Moosylvania. My advice to agents who blog is to focus on those small bits of good info that you can utilize daily, vs the ones that you hire an SEO expert to do and be done with…until you need to hire them again to change it all. So let’s just take a few baby steps:

“1) Focus on categories presented for your most key search terms. Use Bing’s categories in your key words and in your site navigation.”

Clearly this is one area where agents tend to be too self focused regarding organizing by category. I am as guilty as anyone on this one. The benefit of my 3+ years of trial by error suggests that amount of traffic is not as important as having the right kind of traffic. For instance I get a lot of traffic and questions about the Home Inspection phase. Yes, I like to help people with their problems, but searching too well for Home Inspection issues gives you what? People who are already IN a real estate transaction. This raises red flags of all kinds, not the least of which is the rule that we can’t speak with people who are represented by another agent at the time of the conversation. You don’t want to write about things that give you great traffic, but when you get a question/comment, lead you to say “sorry, I can’t answer you” again and again. Begin with the end in mind when choosing “relevant” topics and categories.

“2) Domain Age is very important. Building micro-sites off your main site vs. independent new sites is key for Bing.”

This is hugely important!…and I hope, self explanatory. Again, not a rule I follow, but one I learned early on from Greg Swann of Bloodhoundblog.

“3) Text Rules – Bing favors pages with at least 300 words of text.”

For those all hyped up about video, this could be important. Not sure if you should have a blog and a vlog…or mix it up. Hoping someone will add some thoughts in the comments. My gut says two sites, one a blog and one a vlog…but I’d love some feedback on that.

“4) Linking Out – Bing favors linking out more than other engines as long as the links are relevant to the overall context of the site and keywords.”‘

This is the one that got me all charged up to write a post on this topic. Let me repeat: “Bing favors linking out…” If you see absolutely nothing else in this post…see this! Be the early bird on this one, if you are not already linking out to relevant content. If you think putting things in bold is yelling, well know that I am yelling at myself on this one. I clearly do not do this enough. Forget about SEO…I clearly do not do this enough for many other reasons. Recognizing other experts on the topic at hand is very, very important. I do not do it, as I want my clients to view me as the expert on…well, everything. But that arrogant stance is beyond stupid.

People think I’m controversial, but actually I’m contrary by design. For almost 20 years my main strategy for attracting clients has been to say something that no other agent would say. I was doing “differentiate or die” about two steps out of the womb. I am so very happy that bing is giving me a shove in the right direction on this one, by forcing me to “link out” more and often.

For those that missed the boat on getting really good placement on Google…make Bing your objective starting now, and be the early bird who gets the worm.