Optimized for Bing?

Since Microsoft and Yahoo reached an agreement to merge their search services in hopes of finally being able to compete with the grand search overlord, Google. What does all this mean for small business owners? Well, keep an eye on your Yahoo rankings because they have sure changed since Yahoo search engine has been replaced by Bing.

Here are five easy ways to get Bing to notice you:

The older, the better. Bing places a lot of emphasis on the age of a domain, so if you're just starting out, you might consider buying an older domain in order to get your site a higher ranking.

Titles are important. Bing seems to place a lot more emphasis on title tags than Google does, so make sure you use your best keywords in the title tags of every page on your site.

Text is terrific. For Google, the amount of text you have on a web page doesn't play a huge role. Not so with Bing, which seems to place a higher value on pages that have at least 300 words.

Outbound links are OK. Google has always seemed to frown on the number of outbound links you have on a page. But Bing actually seems to like them--at least for now.

Backlinks are even better. If you're frustrated because all of your efforts to get links pointing to your site haven't gotten you anywhere with Google, then good news! When it comes to backlinks, Bing's attitude seems to "the more, the merrier"--as long as the links are coming from relevant sites.

So get out there and don’t leave Bing at the back door. Bear in mind that this is a huge change, and will take months to fully take effect.