270 places difference between Bing and Google: What to do?

Kristof Maret

9 years ago

After Simonne Raffat and her fabulous success on the Web, just with training, here is the case of Jean Pierre Mercier: this proactive trainer has come a long way; He went looking for master queries by taking our SEO courses as well as the optimized writing training. He also opted for our consulting support.

This example also addresses the comparison of the differences in results on the two most used engines (Google and Bing) and the location of visibility from one country to another.

It is often said that a site that is well optimized for Google is also optimized for Bing, yet the differences are obvious, as shown by this case.

An SEO contract experienced as a collaboration

“JPM” is a sales specialist and has been giving training for many years. Very well connected to large companies in Quebec as well as in France, he has long neglected the potential of his website and, at the time he reaches me, it has an exemplary lack of visibility.

Proactive, enlightened, a good writer, he is committed to learning and getting involved. He decides to commission an audit from us and then to subscribe to a consulting service.

A few months ago, JPM found that a number of the deep pages of his company’s website (Challenge-Action) had a “correct” ranking on niche queries in Google. On the other hand, he was surprised that the master query “sales training” did not appear in any results and that his home was not found.

He then searches for the URL of his portal that ranks highest on this essential query and identifies a category page in 270th place in the SERP out of Google.ca (in French).

Undervalued? Penalized, he decides to move and extensively investigates articles, forums, opinions: he leaves nothing to chance.

The architecture in question

The audit of the site reveals that its architecture is totally erratic and we are first and foremost focused on correcting the serious errors made by the site’s developers.

Anthology

Shop installed on a 404 page
Internal redirects
Whimsical breadcrumb
URL out of all logic

When asked for corrections, the web creation agency was unable to take over the site and argued 9 times in an email response “that’s how it is, because the model is like that”…

So we fix the site with our developer…

Onpage Optimization

Once this technical step has been completed, we decide to push the targeted query by attempting a first ” onpage ” optimization, Jean Pierre follows the basic SEO + SEO writing training.

Lengthening of the text,
Internal Linking
Adding outbound links,

He hopes to make the site’s real strong page on this competitive query and its variants.

The optimization done, she then goes from the 270th^{to the} 130th position,^{which is encouraging… But this is still not enough to see traffic soar…}

Radically different results depending on the engines and the test locations.

Leaving Montreal to lavish his knowledge in France, Jean Pierre was surprised to note that the offending page appeared in 51st place on Google.fr and that many other URLs on the site were positioned much better than in Quebec.

We then checked on google.ca in English and found much better performance than on the French-Canadian engine.

Finally, we also note that Bing France displays the said page in the very first place (yes, top 1) this famous “category” on its generic query “sales training”.

Geo-targeting: a major impact.

Armed with this data, I check the geo-targeting of the portal in Google “Console” (formerly Webmaster tool) and notice that it has been left by default on the United States…

This would explain why the site appeared better in the English pages.

After correcting for geo-targeting, the page jumped 100 places in just a few hours to the third page of results on Google.ca in French

This is “less bad”, but as we know, it is still insufficient to ensure visits and conversions.

Differences between Bing and Google’s algorithms

This correction in geo-targeting only partially explains the differences in results with the top 1 displayed by Microsoft Bing.

On the other hand, we know that Google often indexes “product” pages much better, while Bing values them less well.

Among the differences between the two search engines, some SEOs believe that Google gives more weight to local links, and it is true that hyperlinks that point to “challenge-action.com are mostly French.

Semi-hidden content

The reader should also know that optimized pages contain a lot of text placed in toggles in order to preserve the visual of the “tiles” promoting the courses and professional training modules that are the products of the e-store.

Although it uses them extensively in its tutorials, Google considers this type of content to be semi-hidden and, without penalizing it as spam, does not value it. (John Mueller ” Google doesn’t take into account the wording in tabs or accordions, which make it semi-visible.)

We decide to free these “hidden” paragraphs, remove the toggles and reveal all the content of the “sales training” page.

The graphic design loses its aesthetics, but as long as the page remains in^25th position, no one notices…

Less than 48 hours later, the page has risen 9 places and is now^16th.

Local netlinking

It is through targeted publications on quality local media [Huffington post, Isarta, promo-métier, droit-inc. …] that finally the query “sales training” goes back to the top 3, where it is now settled at the time of writing this story.

Conclusions of this monitoring and optimization actions:

Site architecture
Location in Google console
Text lengthening and onpage optimization
Avoid semi-hidden content.
Search for valuable local links

Even if the algorithms evolve almost daily and no site is immune to surprises, good or good… bad work, quality work pays off and is part of a certain sustainability.

These actions and their effects took place over 7 months, they cost

Site Architecture Correction $400
Consulting Hours $700
Writing of 3 optimized pages. $450
Netlinlking $1000
And a lot of personal investment on the part of this workaholic. [Writing and lengthening existing articles, publications in other blogs, local backlinking ] A $2500 file over 8 months for competitive applications… This would have exceeded $10,000 if Référencement PME had had to take care of everything.

In addition to his ability to work, this entrepreneur has been able to take charge of his file and has improved his potential patience… which was not his first quality.

In this summer period, I will refer the reader to the proverbs of SEO.

“Patience and length of time are more than strength or rage”. [The Fountain, The Lion and the Rat]