Including Bing in your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy will allow you to reach more users with your marketing messages. Granted, Google remains the leading search engine, with the Mountain View company processing more than 1.2 trillion searches each year. In recent years, however, Bing has been steadily gaining traction on its counterpart. Statistics show that nearly one in three of all U.S. searches involve Bing, making it the country’s search-largest search engine. But if you’re planning to target Bing’s search results in your business’s SEO strategy, there are a few things you should know.

Sign Up for Bing’s Webmaster Tools

Just like Google has a portal where webmasters can manage their websites and access analytical data, so does Bing. Known as Bing’s Webmaster Tools, it’s free to use and takes just a few minutes to sign up. You should begin by creating an account here and adding your website. This forces Bing to crawl and index your website, giving you a better chance at scoring a top search ranking for your desired keywords.

Sign Up for Bing Places for Business

In addition to Bing’s Webmaster Tools, you should also sign up for Bing Places for Business. Assuming you run a local business, creating a listing here will help you rank for invaluable local keyword searches. You can add relevant information about your business, such as its name, address, phone number and website URL. Bing will notice a correlation between your address and website, thereby improving the local search rankings for your website. And like Bing’s Webmaster Tools, Bing Places for Business doesn’t cost a dime.

Focus on Content

In many ways, optimizing a website for Google’s search results requires the same approach as optimizing a website for Bing’s search results. Both search engines emphasize the importance of high-quality, relevant content. If your website contains little or no content — or if it contains low-quality content — it probably won’t rank high. Therefore, you should focus on building high-quality content that’s valuable to your audience.

Go Mobile

Your website should also be compatible on mobile devices. With more people using smartphones and tablets to connect to the internet than desktop computers, mobile compatibility isn’t something that you can overlook in your SEO strategy. Thankfully, a simple solution is to use a responsive web design. With a responsive design, your website will be compatible with all devices, allowing you to reach more users and achieve higher search rankings in the process.