For businesses online, ranking is everything. With research showing that the vast majority of people use search engines to find what they are looking for, getting as high up on the list as you are able to can dramatically increase sales and attention. While many people focus on Google for search engine optimization and ranking, it is important to note that a good amount of traffic still goes through Yahoo and Bing. That being said, lets take a moment to review how Bing and Yahoo determine their ranking of a website.
Both Bing and Yahoo continue to state that the best factors for determining the ranking on their search engines is through content and quality. Content refers to unique information that is not found or copied from other places. Unique content includes information relevant to your website. Quality is a bit of a vague term. Generally, it is considered to mean how much your content relates to the purpose of your website as well as other information provided on your website. The more your website continues to be a consistent source of new information, the higher your expected ranking can be.
Yahoo and Bing, along with Google, have stressed how repetition can negatively harm the ranking of your website. Things like duplicate pages and repeat entries may harm your website. By limiting the amount of repetition that occurs, you can increase your ranking.
Leading the way, Google has helped make both Bing and Yahoo pay more attention to the number of links going to and coming from your website. As a result, the links other people make to your website, along with the links you make to similar websites can help to increase your ranking with Bing and Yahoo.
Bing and Yahoo were tested to see whether or not they use the meta keyword tag to determine general ranking. The results were that Yahoo rarely uses meta keyword tags. While it is not known is there is zero effect from meta keywords tags, the influence of these tags is considered very low. The same is true for Bing which stated that meta keyword tags added little to the ranking of a website. That being said, it still pays to include meta keyword tags when appropriate, as every little bit could help in your ranking. Like with any SEO, it pays not to be spammy with their usage.