What You Need to Know About Bing’s New Link Penalties

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As the second largest search engine, site owners also optimize for Bing. And just recently, Bing released new link penalties that will affect private blog networks, manipulated cross-site linking, and subdomain leasing. All of these are intended to offer a better search experience and a fair platform for internet users and website owners.

Are you worried that your site will be affected? The following are the things you need to know:

Cross-site linking 

Cross-site linking is crucial in creating healthy backlinks. It’s also one of the foundations of the internet and considered to be a major ranking factor, both for Google and Bing.

However, some website owners tend to perform manipulative cross-linking for the sake of gathering traffic and visibility. Usually, these sites are owned by the same entity and made just to boost each one’s internet standing.

If Bing discovers that several sites are cross-linking to each other exclusively, it may lead to penalties. This will be a direct violation of Bing’s inorganic site structure.

Subdomain leasing

Subdomain leasing refers to the spammy activity of renting a subdomain for SEO advantage. If the mother domain has excellent search standing, the owner will decide to rent a specific subdomain to another entity. According to Bing, this is unacceptable.

Letting a third party rent a subfolder or subdomain is a form of cheat that aims to outrank competitor sites. So even if the website is brand new, it can rank fast as the internet presence of the mother domain trickles down to it.

Private blog networks

Private blog networks or PBN are very rampant on the web. Both Google and Bing pose penalties for sites using these networks. Although PBN seems harmless, it’s actually a spammy tactic that abuses the boundaries of a website.

Some websites will be split into several domains to generate as much traffic as possible. However, this is a form of cheat that gives website owners an unfair advantage. So to stop websites from using it, Bing is giving stiff penalties for websites found to be abusing the boundaries of the domain.

However, as per checking, many sites are still enjoying the benefit of PBN. So if Bing is serious about going after these websites, it has a lot more work to do.

What could go wrong?

The biggest impact that websites will suffer from these penalties is poor rankings. That’s quite a big deal and these sanctions are one of the toughest of Bing’s efforts. As much as many guilty websites are still to be discovered, it will only take a matter of time before the search engine unravels such dirty secrets.

Take note that any violation will have incurring penalties. Bing is still the second largest search engine. And if you rank poorly, you’ll lose a large chunk of potential traffic.

Final words 

It’s good to see that Bing is starting to put penalties where it’s necessary. They are now fostering a healthier competition and stiffer guidelines that will make their platform a fair ground for website owners. It’s best to quit your bad SEO habits and start playing by the rules.