• We removed the placeholder HTML file for the homepage.
• We removed the disallow entry from the robots.txt file.
• We updated the privacy setting in Wordpress to allow search engine access
• We updated our corporate website to reflect the new blog URL.
• We created and uploaded the 301 redirects from all of the old blog URLs to the counterpart URLs on the new blog domain. [Note: We did not write 1-to-1 redirects for every URL. Due to time constraints, we only created 1-to-1 redirects for the 60 or so blog post URLs. For all other URLs, we created a wildcard redirect that 301'd all URLs to the new blog's homepage. Due to our previous blog's lack of links, I caved on this item. In most other cases, I recommend 1-t0-1 redirects when changing URL structure or moving from one domain to another.]
• We built an XML sitemap for the new blog.
• We created/verified Webmaster accounts with Google, Yahoo and Bing. In these accounts, we submitted our XML sitemap location. All sitemaps were accessed within 24 hours of submission.

All of that took place last Tuesday (3-Nov-2009). Today is November 10, 2009. How have the search engines responded? Let’s take a look at our site counts in Google, Yahoo and MSN Bing:

Google Site Count: 8 URLs indexed

Yahoo Site Count: 1 URL Indexed

MSN Bing Site Count: 49 URLs Indexed

Just in case you cannot see the pictures, here are the results:

• Google: 8 URLs indexed
• Yahoo: 1 URL indexed
• MSN: 49 URLs indexed

That’s amazing to me. In my experience with crawling speed and indexing speed, Google typically wins big. But after a week of TheRangeBlog.com being live and active, Bing is clearly winning the race to index our blog. Nice work, Bing! Thanks for taking note of our blog.

I should also note that our blog has almost no inbounds links. Aside from the links from our corporate site and from a few Range Twitter accounts, we have virtually no link authority. Our lack of inbound link love is obviously playing a role in how quickly our site is getting indexed. But worry not – because we are working on links! (And if you are the linking kind, please consider linking to us. I won’t beg, but I would appreciate any link juice. Well, not from bad neighborhoods. Yes, I am an SEO.)

The first question that we got when word of this first came out – much like at the time of the launch of Wolfram Alpha, Cuil and every other media-dubbed Next Big Thing – was ‘how does this change my SEO?’. And it’s a fair question – MSN added new functions and are clearly testing others, and there had been talk of integrating behavioral information into results so that if you looked for ‘fish’ it would know whether you were looking for a restaurant or a rod and reel. Google sneezes and everyone’s rankings change, so what happens when it’s changing – dun dun DUUUUUH – names?

The answer to what Bing will change about how you approach SEO – much like most every other great leap forward in organic search – is nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

No matter what changes are brought to bear by Google, Yahoo and the rest of the bunch, SEO at its core is about three things: Is your content readable, are you pursuing the right keywords and are engines getting maximum value from your site – and until your content doesn’t matter anymore, your SEO strategy should be the same.

That’s not to say that search engines won’t expand their ability to read content, that new keyword sets won’t become important and that there won’t be new ways to put your site’s best foot forward. On this last point, there have been a lot of new opportunities created by Bing and especially by Google to improve both your search positioning and the way that your results appear in search engines. A good SEO team should be working with you on things like applying microformats to your pages and other new opportunities that have arisen with the engines’ newest toys.

Still, these opportunities won’t matter much if engines can’t see your site in the first place, or if you’re trying to sell shoes from a page without the word ‘shoes’ on it. These issues will make up the vast majority of how well you appear in search engines, and have been since the days when dinosaur’s roamed the earth and Google was a twinkle in Larry Page’s eye.

In essence, if you want to be ready for the next big Bing, make sure you’re ready for MSN first and see if that doesn’t take care of most of it.

Apparently, the idea behind Bing is that it should convey to the user the sound that is made when a light bulb goes off in one’s head, like what happens when Wile E. Coyote gets a great idea or when you solve a Rubik’s cube. My colleagues and I chatted about this at length, and we determined that Bing is not the sound that at all goes off in our heads at the point of enlightenment.

For me the sound is an obvious ‘ting’ with some vibrato to it. For my good friend Brian, who tends to be more left brained, the sound is much more course and sharp. We did our best to find it but the closest we could find was ‘e-spark2’. Ding also seemed to be a very popular reponse. Eureka, gasp, AH!….on and on and on. This other guy thought it sounded like the bell on the counter of a cheap motel.

Later, I brought the discussion to the car. Since my daughter and spend a lot of time in the vehicle, and there is usually a lot of empty air to fill, I asked her what she thought about Bing. She’s never been much for short and sweet so her answer didn’t surprise me in the least. A very animated, “wait, wait, I got it, I know this one.” To be honest we both concurred that might be a little long and cumbersome to remember at the keyboard.

Whatever the sound, we’ll see if MSN’s new search is worth me switching from Googling to Binging anytime soon.

Online celebrity culture and I have a real love/hate relationship. I love that it is quickly updated and always there to provide a brief reprieve from more important tasks, but I loathe its vapidity and the shame I feel for looking Reminiscently like I felt after my older brother and sister let me watch Porky’s in a hotel room at the tender age of 5.

Love it or hate it, online celebrity culture isn’t going anywhere, and in fact, its assimilation of your eyeballs, time and brain is even more ingrained. Consider MSN’s latest venture, Celebrifeed. Celebrifeed is a central repository for your favorite icon’s tweets and blog entries—if you want to know exactly how boring celebrities actually are, you can find out when they tell you about what they ate for lunch. Of course, running alongside will be supplemental material from reputable titles such as Us Weekly and Parade Magazine.

I’m going to do my best to stay far away from the likes of this. I already feel dumber and this might just push me over some sort of brink. Hats off though to you MSN for granting yet another destination, slightly rearranged, which will allow a few seconds shaved off a life.