Back To Keyword Basics With Bing

Nancy Lambert

Every web design worker knows how frustrating it can be to type in endless lists of keywords that are just slight variations on each other, trying to cover all the different ways somebody might phrase what is essentially the same search. Now, in an era where certain other search engines are increasingly moving away from keywords as a search metric, Bing is getting back to basics with an improved Broad Match system that lets its search algorithm do the hard work instead.

“With Broad Match, Bing Ads is able to find relevant and significant relationships between your bidded keywords and user queries, regardless of whether or not the full bidded keyword is represented in the query,” Bing explains in its blog. “As a result, you are able to increase the number of opportunities your ads can appear for based on relevant search queries, making it a powerful tool that helps you save time and capitalize on additional customer opportunities.”

According to the search engine, using Broad Match can more than double the number of impressions an advertiser gets, and can increase clicks by 43%. It is an opt in system, so web designers should not assume that it will apply to their pages by default. It should not, however, cause any problems for established sites that do not trim down their keywords.

Under the new system, key phrases will work as they always did and will only be identified as such if the words in a search terms are in the same order, though it is not a problem if the term also includes other words. Broach Match keyword coding will enable web designers and marketers to create associations between words so that Bing will consider it every time it finds those words in the same query, no matter how they are arranged.

This renewed, improved focus on keywords is likely to be attractive to business owners marketing their own sites, many of whom have a good understanding of how to target particular market segments in this way but are confused by changing systems of website ranking. It makes it simple to connect market research with the terms to be used in an article; however, due to the changes that have taken place at Google over the past few years, it remains advisable to use keywords sparingly. Though it is not possible to please all of the search engines all of the time, it is possible to avoid courting trouble.

Topics: Inbound Marketing