Fused Nation

Bingdude (Duane Forrester) offers some good tips on link building and what it means for your rankings in Bing.  It’s an interesting move by Bing, most likely led by Duane (who is a SEO himself, or at least was).

The article itself is good, but doesn’t really tell those in the business anything they didn’t already know.  But that’s kind of the point.  For years Google has dominated the search market and that has been influenced in no small way by the SEO community focusing on Google rankings.  During the early years of SEO, business adoption of SEO was low and general knowledge about Google wasn’t huge outside academic and tech communities.

The SEO take up on Google optimisation led to the SEO take up of Adsense, Adwords, Gmail, Analytics and so on.  That’s a solid market of early adopters that Google has been feeding off for many years now – and frankly not offering that much in return (Adsense revenues aren’t great and the program hasn’t really changed much over the years).

In recent years, Bing has dumped loads of cash into developing it’s search wing and has made some good moves – and I think making a move for the SEO industry is the latest feather in their cap.  Check out the raves about Bingdude over on Webmasterworld (keeping in mind Googleguy has remained faceless and anonymous for many years).  A minor coup for Bing but I think a start on the right road.

You see, Google’s model for growth has basically been get the information by offering stuff for free and then monetise the information.  Competitors have tried to compete on this basis over the years but realistically, Google has too far a head start for another competitor to take a decent share of the search market (Bing has made some efforts, but still limited market share).  But, tackling the problem in the same way Google grew is in fact a good strategy for any business and that seems like the route Bing is taking now;

• Webmaster center for webmasters to grab info about their sites (now includes Yahoo! data).
• Active and open blog about SEO – grabs the SEO interest and realistically – they’re not giving anything away.  It’s stuff pro SEOs already know.  BUT – it engages everyone else – bloggers, newbie SEOs, business owners – awesome content!

Taking the market, one demographic at a time is a solid long term approach and I think it will be good for the market.  Search aside (I do like using Google), the industry needs some competitors for Adsense at least – and certainly a more transparency and communication between search engines and website owners, because frankly that is an area that Google’s academic background and business naivety has let them down.  Perhaps Bing or someone else can pick up the slack on that front?

Scott