Bing claims to bring together the best of search and people in your social network. Optimization of business profiles in the Bing Business Portal (BBP) is neither difficult nor time consuming. Like any site it takes time to play around and become familiar with the different features. Bing has web news, images, videos, maps and much more.
For those of you unfamiliar with Bing, new at using it, or looking to better understand the site, here are a few tips for optimizing local business listings.
1. Claim Your Business Listing
Similar to other search engines, by claiming a listing helps to validate the information and states that the business is active. This helps to increase ranking factors. A issue for local search engines is having to figure out which business is active or not in order to delete the expired listings from the databases. By claiming your business listing it helps reassure that you are active.
2. Set Your Hours of Operation
Bing business profiles include a small sign icon. It would not be surprising that business rank higher when they list themselves as being open. Bing has a mobile site that many people use to search close listings when on the go. The profile gets more attention by showing it is open, which could be an increasing element for your business.
3. Check & Add Categories
Make sure you place your business within the correct category, and have it within the right categories to avoid having a fuzzy match. When you have a correct match, the listing is far more likely to get a better rank from it because the correct users are able to quickly and easily view your business.
4. Add Deals & Coupons
Bing also has integrated with Groupon, so if you have a Groupon offer going on for your business it could appear with your local listing in Bing.
5. Correct Contact Information
Your contact information should be consistent with all major places. It should include the business name, address, and phone number. Under the maps tab, people can look up directions, view traffic, view businesses, and explore. It is very important that the location is up to date, and correct to come up in the search. People also are able to add your business to their favorite places.
Bing is integrated with other social networks such as Facebook and Hotmail, making it easy to log in and get started. This web search engine from Microsoft, is easy to use and distributes local information to viewers such as current traffic, business listings, people listings, collections, local searching for restaurants, coupons, restaurant reviews, movies, hotels and much more. Bing also gives instant answers to sports scores from a specific day, statistics on teams, conversation of units, math calculations, spelling, flight tracking, translations and many others. Bing also can show direct stock information like a stock chart, price, and volume when entering a company name or stock symbol. Bing has many other features that can help optimize your business. Take a look for your self, and get started today.
If you have any questions, contact us today.
