So ranking #1 on Google isns’t enough for you? Luckily Bing has recently provided 18 of its top tips how to rank higher on Bing and Yahoo search.

While most of these items are similar to current wisdom for how to rank #1 on Google, it is nice to hear these straight from the mouth of Bing, and not conjecture from all us SEO gurus out there! So without further adieu, here are the 18 items in no particular order:

1. Create a solid content hierarchy by doing basic keyword research and avoiding placement of your content in rich media such as Silverlight and Flash.
2. Use a short meta title that has fewer than 65 characters and that’s unique to each page, and try to include the targeted keyword toward the beginning of that title.
3. Make sure your site is crawlable by using an XML sitemap, a robots.txt file, and well-structured on-site navigation.
4. Create quality content (following the guidelines Bing provided earlier).
5. Improve your site structure by using an HTML sitemap and linking to trusted sources both within your site and outside of it.
6. Use schema.org markup.
7. Use a unique meta description tag.
8. When you build links, focus on keyword-relevant anchor tags that link back to quality content on your page.
9. Create a user interface that prioritizes the user experiences; the search perspective on things like page load time aren’t as important as how the user responds.
10. Create an RSS feed.
11. Encourage social sharing with the use of social buttons.

These last 7 are things you should <span class=”red”>NOT</span> do in your SEO efforts:

1. Don’t use thin content.
2. Don’t buy links.
3. Don’t engage in three-way linking.
4. Don’t duplicate content.
5. Don’t cloak your website.
6. Don’t use link farms.
7. Don’t use auto-following on the social front.

If you follow these simple 18 guidelines, you should be able to get top rankings in all the major search engines, not just Bing and Yahoo.

To learn more about our SEO process, check out our SEO section of the site or our Education Center.

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A lot of people ask me why their site won’t rank #1 on Google. They think that just because they were prom king back in 2002 that their website deserves to treated like a king as well. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t care too much about your personal history. But Google does care about your domain’s history. The older your domain is, the more chance you have a trustworthy business. Further, the  older the domain, the more chances other people linked to it. So its all connected… like a web..

Below are the top 10 reasons why your site won’t rank #1 on Google:

1. Your Site Doesn’t Have Enough Quality Content.
2. You Put In Large Chunks Of Content All At Once and Never Update It.
3. You Engage In ‘Cloaking’- Your Site Shows Different Information To Search Engines Than It Shows A User.
4. Your Site Has Duplicate Content.
5. You Practice Keyword Stuffing.
6. You Have ‘Doorway Pages’ Made Ad hoc To Attract Search Bots.
7. You Link Out To Sites That Are Devalued By Google. Porn, Gambling, Tobacco Are Bad.
8. Your Domain is Brand New
9. Your Server is So Slow You Could Deliver the Content by Hand Faster.
10. You Are Still Using Flash to Display Your Content.

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