How to rank higher on Bing as tour & activity operators

Tour operators should be thinking about optimising their SEO for not only Google, but also, Bing.

What is Bing?

Bing is Microsoft’s search engine. They are the second largest search engine, with a 2.47% market share.

Why Bing for tour and activities operators?

While 2.47% might seem like a small number, that is still more than 1 billion visits each month. And because Bing is often overlooked, the competition to rank higher on Bing’s search engine results pages is much lower than that of Google.

This makes it a lot easier for tour operators to rank on Bing. There are also plenty of users who use Bing as their only search engine, so tour operators will have access to exclusive users that cannot be found elsewhere.

“Hey Alexa, what tours or activities can I do nearby?”

Amazon Alexa runs exclusively on Bing. With plenty of users now using voice assistants to make search queries, appearing higher on Bing’s search results page will also provide a higher likelihood of you being found through voice assistants.

How can tour operators rank higher on Bing?

1)Consistency is key

Bing prefers pages that provide up-to-date content. In many cases, your content will be up to date for long periods of time, but in other cases, content may be out of date just 2 weeks later.

The best way to ensure your content is always up to date is to consistently produce and update your content.

We recommend creating a consistent content calendar for your business and doing an audit on all your content twice a year.

2)Create engaging content

Bing considers how users interact with search results. Meaning, the more users click through to your website and the longer they spend on your website, reading or consuming your content, the higher Bing will rank your pages.

Consider using videos for topics like “Best things to do in Sydney”. This type of content tends to drive higher engagement.

3) Bing Places (Claim or list your business)

Just like Google My Business, Bing has Bing Places. Just like Google, the goal of Bing Places is to deliver more useful local search results to its user.

Claiming your tour operation business or listing it on Bing Places is one of the fastest way to boost your local SEO performance on Bing.

This makes it easier for your tour and activity business to show up when Bing users search for queries like “Things to do nearby”. Something that’s extremely important for attracting travelers who are already in-destination to your tour and activity business.

PS: Putting your location details on prominent display on your website is a great way to boost your local SEO on Bing.

4) Take advantage of Bing Connected Pages

With Bing Connected Pages, you can claim your official tour & activity social pages and connect them to your account. At the moment, Bing supports the following social pages:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Instagram
• MySpace (Not sure why they would include this one)

Connecting your pages also allow Bing to see your authority, locations details, etc. beyond your own website. This provides Bing with more data which allows Bing to rank your tour operation to rank even higher.

Bonus: Social Media matters to Bing’s algorithm

While not 100% proven, there are many sources that suggest your social media presence matters more to Bing than it does to Google. Bing uses social signals as a factor when judging the quality of your content.

Social signals are your social media shares and interactions. This means consistently producing engaging content on your social media platforms will also help you rank higher on Bing.

Bing SEO vs Google SEO for tour operators

The goods news – you don’t have to pick one. While we’ve called out some optimizations you can do for Bing above, many of the factors that both Google and Bing’s algorithm take into account are very similar including:

• Site speed
• Backlinks
• Keyword research
• Meta-descriptions
• Customer reviews

In fact, most of the points outlined in this article regarding SEO for Google, will apply to Bing.

So, working on the key areas above will help your tour and activity business rank higher on Bing, in addition to Google.