1. Keep your SEO tactics to yourself – All it takes is one bitter blog reader, affiliate or competitor to issue a complaint to Google detailing the nature of your SEO tactics. For example, John Chow (author of JohnChow.com) – a blogger of considerable notoriety, openly discussed on his blog how he asked bloggers to link back to his blog with an anchored keyword. The end result? Google laid down the hammer and it took him over a year to regenerate a decent Page Rank.
2. Don’t over-optimize your site with target keywords – Google indexes everything according to relevance, and not only this, it also has filters in place to nullify any keywords or phrases that have been aggressively targeted in landing pages or in meta tags. How to avoid this? Be liberal. Make your content relevant, and ensure that the application of your keywords isn’t too over-bearing. Take an outsider’s perspective – if someone can read your text and easily identify and keyword repetition, Google most certainly will act the same way. The key is to work with Google, and not against it.
3. Don’t sculpt your Page Rank using tag attributes – Namely, the ‘rel=nofollow’ tag attribute, Google has since decided to disregard the value of this tag and for quite a valid reason. It was being used to nullify link authority and re-direct link juice to target landing pages – known more formally as ‘page rank scultping’. Some companies still choose to manipulate this tactic, but we recommend that it is something you should avoid – this technique is tired and highly temperamental.
4. Artificial link profiles – Google filters out sites if their link profiles match any of the following criteria:
   • Links are too close together, or similar links recur through your page frequently.
   • The anchor text of all of your links is identical (they all re-direct to the same landing page).
   • You’re links aren’t deep enough to other pages
   • Links are low quality and irrelevant to the site content
   • If there are sidebar and footer links – these rank poorly.
   • Too many reciprocal links

Don’t try and manipulate Google’s search algorithm, as you will be quickly identified and neutralized!

Right, so it sounds a little bit scarier than it actually is, but it’s not worth taking the chance.

5. Finally, a common sense practice – Don’t use SEO to promote spammy websites! Adhere to the guidelines, and work with the Google algorithm.

Firstly, let’s look at the structure of Bing search in comparison to Google. A simple search for a retail product, let’s say, ‘iphone’ will return search results as organized into 3 distinct formats. On the far left ‘related searches’, also known as the ‘explorer pane’ which are based on relevant categories – for example, in your search for iphone you will find that the explorer pane breaks the results down into categorical tabs. As a result from this search the tabs that appear individually relate to: price, geographical region, buying, unlocking, reviews, cost and news. How does this relate to SEO, exactly? Well as a result of the explorer pane, if you’re a provider of iphone accessories for example, you should be tailoring your target search terms to match the category in which you want to be listed on Bing. It’s a new level of search refinement that experts predict will be highly favoured amongst online shoppers.

Now let’s move across the page… In the center of the Bing SERP is your archetypal search format in which the raw results are listed and ranked according to keyword relevance and authority, and then on the far right you will find your sponsored links. Sounds a lot similar to Google, right? Aside from the results page layout, the features are virtually identical. But where Bing has made this prehistoric format innovative is its caching of extended meta data – if you hover over the right hand side of a search listing a small pane appears, giving you an extended insight into the content of the web page you’re looking to view complete with some links to other elements included in that web page. This is great for organic SEO, why? Simple – more of your site text is being fed into the Bing SERP display, which means that if you’re consistent with the use of your target keywords throughout your entire site copy, you significantly heighten your chances of being indexed with higher search engine authority – but in arguing this point; Google reads the organic relevance of your site text anyway.
So is it worth alternating your SEO strategy to account for Bing’s newer features? The answer is No. Google already has, and will continue to set the standard for search engine optimization… Don’t believe me? Here it straight from the source itself:

“Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn’t change that. Bing’s new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design.”– Bing Webmaster Center Team, Microsoft

At the end of the day, SEO is all about the quality of your content, intelligence of your site design and the execution of your targets. In essence, if you follow this universal notion, you can’t go wrong in ranking well in any SERP.

Think of Bing and Google to be similar to the video game characters Ken and Ryu from street fighter, both have similar functions, but different specialties – and one well always be favoured over the other!