A HUGE PURCHASE BY MICROSOFT

Microsoft recently purchased LinkedIn, the social networking website for working professionals for $26.2 billion. Wow. Not only is that an insane amount of cash but it's a huge purchase for the software giant. 

On the surface, we can imagine how the aquisiition will have an impact on the platform. We can expect full integration into the other Microsoft products and it's rumored that they will be including this in their already lucrative Office 365 platform. The possibilites there are endless. But what other potential impact will this purchase have? 

In this article we explore how the purchase of LinkedIn by Microsoft could have a huge impact on SEO.

Looking for other SEO tips and tricks? Check out these other great articles from our blog!

• Increase the Effectiveness of your Social Media Posts
• 5 Ways to Incorporate Keywords into your Pages/Posts
• How to Optimize your Pages for Social Media with Yoast

Or check out '10 SEO Mistakes to Avoid in your Next Website Redesign' by clicking below!

it's all about bing baby

Remember that search engine that Microsoft launched back in 2009? Oh yeah well it's called Bing. Now the little voice inside your head is probably saying "what the heck is this guy talking about, no one uses Bing!" Now, you're right, it's not nearly as popular as Google search, but you're also wrong.  As of 2014 (as seen in the chart), Bing made up around 14% of all Internet searches. That number will grow and I'll tell you why: Microsoft Windows 10.

In order to increase the popularity and usage of Bing, as well as begin to gather large amounts of user data, Microsoft fully integrated Bing into their new OS Windows 10 making it more available and easy to use. So what if they aren't the web page people open when they start their web browser if you never open your web browser to search. Windows is the most popular desktop/laptop OS in the world and that's not changing anytime soon. Full integration means that Bing will only grow in popularity, and with that, so will it's importance in your SEO strategy.

WHy Linkedin?

LinkedIn is growing. Both in revenue and user base (as seen below). It's easy to see how this social media platform could be attractive to a company like Microsoft. However,  LinkedIn is unique in the sense that it is a platform for professionals. This makes it especially valuable to a software company that mainly markets and sells it's products to... you guessed it: working professionals and is extremely interested in getting it's hands on user data and profiles from their customer base. For $26.2 billion they just bought the personal and professional information for millions of people that use their products everyday. 

GOOGLE AS A CASE STUDY

So what does this have to do with LinkedIn? Well just like Bing, LinkedIn will undoubtably be Microsoft's next target for full integration. With that will come more LinkedIn accounts connected to Office 365. Think about that. Full search engine integration (Bing) and full social media platform integration (LinkedIn) into Windows 10. The impact of this is too great for this article, but we'll focus on search and use Google Plus as a case study.

When Google launched Google Plus in 2011 it wasn't exactly received with a ton of excitement. Users were heavily entrenched in other Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook and really had no interest in signing up for a new imitator without a real niche or identity. This was a problem for Google and one that they quickly found a solution to. What does the largest search company in the world do when they can't get people and companies to sign up for their new platform? Easy, they make it important to your SEO score. Businesses with a Google + page and profile get an improvement to their SEO score instantly making Google + important to businesses overnight.

the potential impact

The potential SEO impact is fairly straight-forward after looking at what Google did with Google +. Bing is a Microsoft search engine and now they have a social media platform to go with it. The speculation here is that businesses with active LinkedIn accounts will get an SEO score boost from Bing taking a page out of Google's playbook. So if LinkedIn wasn't a part of your SEO or social media strategy in the past, you'd be wise to make it a part of it going forward. Bing isn't the #1 search engine, but it's gaining in popularity and it's integration into Windows gives it a competitive advantage that no other search engine can match. It's crazy to think about, but someday instead of the phrase "Google it!" being thrown around, you may just tell someone to "Bing it!". 

THANKS FOR READING THIS ENTRY IN SEO TIPS AND TRICKS:

Thanks for visiting our blog and reading this installment in our SEO tips and tricks series!  We hope that it helps you get your site running at peak performance and maximum visibility on search engines.  If you're looking for more great SEO tips check out our full blog or subscribe in the footer at the bottom of this page. Also be sure to download our great PDF guide  by clicking the link below!