Bing is the second-largest search engine in the world. It doesn’t get the same amount of traffic as Google search, but who’s going to turn down free traffic? Not only that, but the number of searchers using Bing has actually increased in recent years.
By using Bing Webmaster Tools, you can optimize your site for the Bing search results to get more traffic and grow your site. Bing Webmaster Tools has recently undergone a massive update this year, providing even more practical tools for improving your SEO.
Below, we’ll take a detailed look at Bing Webmaster Tools, so you can start using and improving your search traffic. You’ll learn everything from adding your website, to submitting sitemaps, running an SEO audit, and more.
Table of Contents
What is Bing Webmaster Tools?
Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service that lets you connect your website with the Bing crawler so it shows up in the search results. You’ll recognize some similarities if you’ve used Google Search Console before. Overall, it helps you monitor and improve your site’s performance in the Bing search results.
Here are some of the main reasons to use Bing Webmaster Tools:
- Monitor your site’s performance and see what keywords you’re ranking for
- See who’s linking to you and compare your offsite SEO to your competition
- Uncover hidden keywords to improve your content strategy
- Control how the Bing bot crawls your website
- Quickly submit new URLs you want crawled and listed in search
- Find hidden SEO issues that are holding your site back from ranking
- And much more
How to Set up Bing Webmaster Tools
Now that you better understand what Bing Webmaster Tools does let’s show you how to get started using the tool.
1. Create an Account
The first thing you need to do is create an account. Navigate to the Bing Webmaster Tools website and click the Get Started button.
Next, you’ll need to connect an existing Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account.
2. Connect and Verify Your Website
After that, you can either import your existing Google Search Console data (if this is already set up), or you can add your site’s URL and click Add and connect the two manually. For this tutorial, we’ll do the manual method.
Once you’ve added your URL, you need to verify it. Here are the three ways you can do it:
Upload an XML file to your web server
If you have access to your server environment, then all you need to do is download the XML file and upload it to the root directory of your website.
To do this, you’ll need to connect to your website via FTP, upload the file, and click the Verify button. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, then simply use one of the other methods.
Add an HTML meta tag to your site’s home page
For the second method, you’ll need to add an HTML meta tag to the <head> tag of your website. If you’re using WordPress, your WordPress theme might have built-in options for adding code to your header or footer.
If not, you can use a third-party plugin like Code Snippets. Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can add a new code snippet with the Bing Webmaster Tools code.
Add a CNAME record to your DNS
The third option is to add a new CNAME record to your DNS. You can add the CNAME record where you purchased your domain name or via cPanel.
Adding via cPanel is quite simple. First, login to your cPanel hosting dashboard and click on Zone Editor.
After that, locate your domain name and click the CNAME button. Then, all you have to do is add the code from above.
Verifying With a WordPress SEO Plugin
If you run a WordPress website and use a popular SEO plugin like Yoast, All in One SEO, or RankMath, you can verify your site using the plugin.
Yoast SEO
To verify your site with Yoast, navigate to Yoast SEO > Settings and click the Site Connections tab. After that enter the HTML meta tag you copied from above.
It will look something like this:
All-in-One SEO
To verify your site using All in One SEO, navigate to All in One SEO > General Settings. Next, click on Webmaster Tools, then Microsoft Bing, and enter the HTML meta tag.
Your code will look something like the code below:
Rank Math
To verify your site using Rank Math, go to Rank Math SEO > General Settings. Then, click on Webmaster Tools and enter the HTML meta tag into the Bing Webmaster Tools box.
It will look similar to the code below:
What You Can Do With Bing Webmaster Tools
Once your site is verified, you’ll be taken to the main Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard. Here, you’ll see the most popular tools immediately, or you can explore every available tool in the left-hand sidebar.
Below, we’ll take an in-depth look at the core features so you can better understand how it works and improve your rankings and traffic from Bing.
Search Performance
The Search Performance tab gives you a detailed breakdown of how your site is performing in Bing search.
You’ll see valuable data like the number of clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position. Plus, you’ll see the number of crawl requests, crawl errors, and indexed pages.
Below that, you’ll see a breakdown of the keywords you’re ranking for, the number of impressions they get in search, clicks, CTR, and the average position.
You can break this data down further by viewing individual page data. If you’ve been doing page optimization, then you’ll see if your efforts are getting results here.
Submitting Website URLs
You can submit your URLs to Bing to get them crawled and indexed faster. This is useful if you’ve just launched a new landing page or published a new blog post.
All you need to do is click on the URL Submission button on your dashboard home page:
Then, click the Submit URLs button in the right-hand corner, enter the URLs you want to index in the pop-up box and click the Submit button.
Submitting Website Sitemaps
Sitemaps essentially give the Bing crawler a list of URLs you want indexed in the search results. It helps the search engines better understand your site structure and can improve your rankings.
To submit or view your sitemaps, click on the Sitemaps button inside your Bing dashboard or the menu button in your sidebar.
If you haven’t submitted a sitemap yet, click the Submit sitemap button and enter the URL for your sitemap.
Once Bing has processed your sitemaps, you’ll see the total number of sitemaps, any that have errors or warnings, and the total number of URLs that have been crawled.
URL Inspection
Clicking the URL Inspection button or menu navigation option lets you inspect any URL on your site. This will tell you the index status of the URL, any SEO issues, and markups applied to the page.
All you need to do is enter the URL and click the Inspect button. Then, you’ll get a breakdown of any issues with the URL. As you’ll see from the results below, the URL we analyzed has some SEO issues that could be improved.
You can also view the Live URL tab, which lets you make sure that the URL and content that’s loading match and gives you a breakdown of what the page looks like to the Bing crawler.
Run a Site Scan
If you want to improve your search engine rankings, use the Site Scan tool. This tool checks for technical SEO errors that keep your site from ranking. Fixing these errors will not only help your rankings in Bing, but other search engines too.
Simply click the Site Scan button on your home page or the left-hand menu, then click the Start new scan button. You can set the scope of your scan to only scan specific URLs, a certain number of pages, or your entire site. Once the scan is complete you’ll receive an email and be able to view your scan results inside your dashboard.
The results show you high-priority errors, warnings, and simple notices.
Site Explorer
The Site Explorer tool breaks down the structure of your website as Bingbot sees it. There’s a lot of detailed information that’ll help you better understand their search performance.
You get access to data like:
- The clicks and impressions of a subfolder or page on your site
- The number of backlinks pointing toward that subfolder or page
- Crawl data for a page/subfolder that shows any crawl errors
- Total document size of the page or subfolder
- And more
Keyword Research
Clicking the Keyword Research tab brings you to the keyword research tool. It uses Bing’s keyword data and shows monthly search volumes on Bing.
All you need to do is enter a keyword and click the Get details button. It’ll show you a breakdown of the monthly search traffic and what countries this traffic is coming from.
It’ll also give you a list of related keywords, traffic estimates, and traffic trends. You can also look at related question keywords and newly discovered keywords.
Overall, it’s pretty valuable data for a free tool and can be used to enhance your existing site content and content strategy.
Backlinks
The Backlinks tool shows you all the backlinks pointing toward different pages on your site. You can sort them by domain, pages, and anchor text.
Beyond viewing your existing backlink profile, you can also compare your site to your competitors. Click on the Similar sites tab and enter a competitor URL.
Then, you’ll see how your site stacks up to your competition in terms of offsite SEO and where you need to improve.
SEO Recommendations
The Recommendations tab gives you actionable insights to help improve your site’s ranking. These are generated automatically based on analyzing your website. These changes will refresh after you make changes and if any new SEO issues are present.
Configuration
The Configuration section gives you control over how the Bing bot crawls your website.
Control Crawler
Clicking the Crawl Control tab gives you the ability to change how and when the Bing crawler crawls your website. If you tend to get a lot of daytime traffic, then you can change the crawler to crawl your website during the evening hours.
Block URLs
Next, you can block specific site URLs from appearing in search in the Block URLs tab. If you run an eCommerce store, you might find duplicate URLs appearing in search for the same product. This happens when you have different product variations. With this tool, you can prevent all these URL variations from being indexed.
If you also notice other weird URLs being indexed, you can hide them here by adding the URL to the list.
Tools and Enhancements
Inside your dashboard’s Tools & Enhancements section are two additional tools to help with site crawling and spam.
Robots.txt Tester
Your robots.txt file tells the search engines which pages should and should not be crawled. It can also block your entire website from being indexed. This tool lets you both view and edit your robots.txt file.
If you find that it’s blocking certain pages or pages from being indexed, simply delete them from the file and click Proceed.
Verify Bingbot
Search engines like Google and Bing use bots to crawl your website and make your content available in search. However, this also means there are malicious bots out there that are trying to crawl and break into your website or hit your site with spam.
Fortunately, this tool lets you check IP addresses, so you can ensure it’s the Bing crawler and not some other malicious bot.
Security and Privacy
The Security & Privacy tab offers a few additional tools to help with content infringement, managing users, and even improving site conversions.
Copyright Removal Notices
If you’ve come across a website that’s stealing your content and repurposing it as your own, then you can use this tool to flag URLs for copyright infringement. Bing will investigate the claim and stop the infringing content from appearing in the search results.
If you’re being accused of copyright infringement from another website, you can also submit a counter notice from this screen.
User Management
If you have a larger team, you may have additional users needing to access Bing Webmaster Tools.
Here, you can control who can access the account and set the permission levels. You can choose from administrator, read/write access, or read only.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a unique tool that shows you how users are engaging with your website. It includes a heat mapping feature that tracks where users click and scroll and how they use your site. It also records user sessions to see how your visitors use your website in real time.
You can use this information to improve your site’s design and make it more user-friendly so your visitors are more likely to convert. That conversion could be joining your email list, buying a product, or taking another action.
Closing Thoughts
By now, you should have a much better understanding of how to use Bing Webmaster Tools. Overall, it’s an invaluable tool for website owners. Even though Bing only accounts for 10% of global search traffic, you can still use this tool to help earn your fair share of it.
Plus, with the advanced onsite SEO tools, technical SEO analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, and more, you can take what you’ve learned to improve your search engine traffic across every search engine.
Now, over to you. Have you used Bing Webmaster Tools to improve your SEO? Share your thoughts and experience in the comments below!
FAQs
What’s the difference between Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console?
Bing Webmaster Tools helps you monitor and optimize your website for the Bing search results, while Google Search Console enables you to optimize your website for Google and improve its performance in the Google search results.
How much does Bing Webmaster Tools cost?
Bing Webmaster Tools is entirely free to use. It’s a free platform provided by Microsoft that helps site owners optimize their sites for Bing.
Should you use Bing Webmaster Tools?
If you want to get more search engine traffic, then yes, you should use Bing Webmaster Tools. It’s a free and easy-to-use tool that helps you get more search traffic from Bing. Plus, the optimization tools can help you improve your onsite SEO, which will also help you get traffic from other search engines.
How do you verify a website in Bing Webmaster Tools?
You can verify a site in Bing Webmaster Tools by uploading an XML file to your web server, adding an HTML meta tag to your site’s homepage, adding a CNAME record to your DNS, or connecting an existing Google Search Console account.
Leave a Reply