When reviewing your organic search rankings on multiple search engines, you may have noticed the results vary depending on which platform you use. You may find yourself at the top spot of SERPs on Bing, while on Google, your rankings fall just a bit behind. So what causes these rankings differences on Google and Bing? We’ll explore the key factors these search engines consider that can affect your search engine rankings.
Mobile-First Indexing
One reason why rankings tend to differ between Google and Bing is due to Google’s mobile-first indexing practices. Originally, Google’s web crawler would review your website’s desktop version, assessing the content and performance of the web pages and ranking them accordingly. However, in September 2020, Google switched to mobile-first indexing, which essentially means if your site isn’t well-optimized for mobile devices, you may find yourself struggling to hit your rankings goals. Bing does not use this practice; instead, it opts for a single index for desktop and mobile users. In this case, you may find yourself ranking higher on Bing than Google for certain queries.
Backlinks: Quantity vs. Relevance
If you aren’t familiar with backlinks, these are links on a web page that link to another website that is not your own. Gaining backlinks helps give your website authority – if other websites include links to your site as a reference point, this lets search engines know that your content is likely to be legitimate and valuable. Bing cares more about the number of backlinks on a web page, along with the relevancy of anchor links, giving more preference to links from government or educational organizations. Google prefers relevant and diverse links and doesn’t put as much emphasis on the amount of backlinks on a web page.
On-Page SEO
Your on-page SEO strategy can make or break your search engine rankings. Bing likes content that has a well-optimized structure, with a heavy emphasis on proper H-tags and metadata. Google wants to see that a web page does not contain duplicate or thin content. To adhere to Google’s algorithms, it is important to make sure your web page content is over 400 words, and any images have alt text descriptions to meet accessibility standards.
Social Media Performance
Social media can be a helpful tool for your SEO strategy. These accounts are great helping you can digital visibility and establishing another means of communication between you and your intended audience. Google doesn’t place a large emphasis on social media content when it comes to organic search rankings. However, Bing considers social media more than Google, so it can be helpful to have a thoroughly fleshed-out assortment of social profiles & interesting content if you’re looking to increase your Bing search rankings.
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