The Microsoft-Yahoo search alliance has been in full swing for nearly a month, and as Brafton reported, both companies have offered ample notice on the need to optimize sites for Bing. Yet, a report from Chitika indicates that marketers are not practicing SEO to maximize traffic from Bing-Yahoo users.
According to the research firm, 47 percent of publishers are not receiving the traffic from Bing and Yahoo they should be. Chitika data shows that publishers see an average of 23.58 percent of search traffic from Bing, and this represents a lot of missed opportunities. Indeed, the latest comScore data reveals that Microsoft and Yahoo together account for nearly one-third of the total core search market (30.6 percent).
The Chitika report indicates that optimizing sites for Bing could bump site traffic by 9.40 percent on average. Yet, nearly half of marketers (46.55 percent) do not currently optimize their sites for Bing and Yahoo.
Plus, some publishers do not consider Bing when creating local content. One publisher that specializes in local content gets just 1.8 percent of traffic from Bing, while Chitika says the site would see an immediate 21 percent increase in traffic if it were made visible to non-Google search engines. Perhaps this is even a conservative estimate in light of the myriad local search developments from Yahoo Brafton has reported, all of which appeal to consumers by facilitating finding nearby businesses.
With this in mind, marketers must remember to take Bing-Yahoo into account when preparing search campaigns and creating site content. At the same time, the power of Google in driving traffic is not to be underestimated. Brafton recently reported that the search giant is still gaining ground in the face of Microsoft and Yahoo’s alliance.
