What Is Bing Webmaster Tools? Your Key to Bing SEO Success
Microsoft’s Bing recently launched its AI-powered generative search feature, and it’s safe to say it’s been quite a success. Since the launch, Bing has seen an uptick in users, reaching 100 million daily active users, with a third new to the search engine.
To put things into perspective, Google remains the clear frontrunner, with one billion daily users. Nevertheless, it appears that Bing has secured itself a larger slice of the market.
So, what does this mean for the SEO world?
With Bing’s momentum, it’s an opportune time for you to pay closer attention to the organic traffic Bing channels your way. After all, diversifying your SEO strategy is never a bad thing.
Keeping that in mind, in this guide, we
- define “What is Bing Webmaster Tools?”,
- explore its importance to SEO content marketing,
- and break down the platform’s key features.
What Is Bing Webmaster Tools?
Just as Google Search Console (GSC) provides insights into how a website is performing on Google, Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools offers webmasters the tool they need to monitor and analyze their site’s performance on Bing’s search engine—all free of charge. Specifically, Bing Webmaster Tools specializes in uncovering how Bing’s search algorithm perceives the alignment of a website’s various elements with its algorithmic preferences.
Learn more: Interested in broadening your SEO knowledge even further? Check out our SEO glossary, where we’ve explained over 250+ terms.
Why Is Bing Webmaster Tools Important?
Bing Webmaster Tools can be a key player in your search engine optimization (SEO) flow. Here’s why:
- Troubleshooting SEO issues: Bing Webmaster Tools provides detailed reports and diagnostics to pinpoint and address SEO challenges specific to Bing’s search algorithms.
- Tailored insights: Bing Webmaster Tools offers unique insights and recommendations tailored to Bing’s search algorithms, meaning strategies that work for Google might need tweaking for Bing. Webmaster Tools provides the guidance you need.
- Direct communication with Bing: Whether you’ve updated a sitemap or made significant site modifications, Bing Webmaster Tools allows you to communicate these changes directly to Bing, ensuring they’re recognized promptly.
- Diverse SEO strategy: While Google might dominate the search engine landscape, on desktop devices, Bing holds a 9.13 percent share. Ensuring your website performs well on Bing will allow you to tap into a different audience segment, potentially increasing your overall traffic and boosting conversions.
How to Set Up Bing Webmaster Tools
So your next question may be, how do I verify a website in Bing Webmaster Tools? Thankfully, it’s a relatively easy process. Let’s take a look at how it’s done:
- Account Creation: Begin by signing up for Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Website Submission: Once registered, you can start submitting and verifying your website URLs. If your site is already verified through GSC, you can simply import the settings, making the process even smoother.
- Verification Methods:
- XML File: Download the XML file provided by Bing Webmaster and upload it to your site’s root directory (usually the public_html folder). After uploading, click “verify.”
- HTML Meta Tag: Copy the provided <meta> tag and insert it into your website’s homepage’s <head> section. After adding the tag, click “verify.” For WordPress users, plugins like Yoast can facilitate this verification.
- CNAME Record: This method involves adding a CNAME record to your domain’s DNS settings. Once added, remember to verify. Note: Changes to DNS settings might take some time to propagate.
Key Features of Bing Webmaster Tools
Here’s a quick breakdown of Bing Webmaster Tools’ key features:
Bing Search Performance
- Metrics monitoring: Bing Webmaster Tools provides a comprehensive dashboard where you can quickly gain access to a variety of tools that allow you to monitor essential metrics such as total clicks, total impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average search position.
- Bing Analytics integration: Integrating Bing Analytics allows you to delve deeper into user behavior, understanding which content resonates most with your audience and where there might be room for improvement.
Sitemaps and URL Submission
- Sitemap submission: Sitemaps are crucial for search engines. They act as a roadmap for your website, guiding search engines to all your essential pages. Bing Webmaster Tools allows you to submit your sitemap, ensuring that Bing’s crawler can efficiently navigate and index your site.
- Direct URL submission: Beyond sitemaps, you can directly submit specific URLs to Bing. A feature that is especially useful for ensuring that newly published or updated content gets indexed quickly.
- Bing indexing: Leveraging the sitemap and URL submission features ensures your content is promptly indexed by Bing, making it discoverable to users searching on the platform.
SEO Tools within Bing Webmaster Tools
- Backlink analysis: Understand which sites are linking to yours, the quality of these links, and how they impact your SEO.
- Keyword research: Identify potential keywords that can drive traffic to your site and understand their search volume and competition.
- SEO reports: Get detailed reports highlighting SEO issues on your site and recommendations on how to fix them.
- Site scans: Regularly scan your site to identify and rectify any potential SEO issues.
Controlling Bing’s Crawler
- Bingbot access control: Bingbot is Bing’s web crawling bot. With Bing Webmaster Tools, you can control how Bingbot accesses and indexes your site, ensuring that it crawls your site efficiently without overloading your server.
- URL blocking: If there are specific pages or sections of your site that you don’t want to be indexed, you can block them from Bingbot, ensuring they don’t appear in search results.
- Robot.txt testing: Test and validate your robot.txt files to ensure they correctly guide Bingbot on which parts of your site to crawl and which to ignore.
- Bing index control: Beyond just blocking specific URLs, you can provide more granular instructions on how you want your content indexed, ensuring that your site appears in Bing search results in a manner that aligns with your SEO strategy.
FAQ
Q1: How Do I Find My Bing Webmaster Verification Code?
Answer: After adding your website to Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll receive a unique verification code. The code will be provided as an XML file, an HTML meta tag, or a CNAME record. Simply apply the chosen method and click “Verify” in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Q2: How Much Does Bing Webmaster Tools Cost?
Answer: Zilch, zero, nada. Bing Webmaster Tools will cost you nothing. It’s a completely free platform offered by Microsoft to help webmasters optimize their sites for Bing’s search engine. There are no hidden charges or premium versions—all features and tools are accessible without ongoing costs.
Q3: What Is Bing Webmaster Tools Content Removal?
Answer: Bing Webmaster Tools’ Content Removal feature lets webmasters request the removal of URLs from Bing’s search results. A tool that is perfect for pages with irrelevant or sensitive information, ensuring they aren’t found on Bing’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
Conclusion and Next Steps
While tools like Bing Webmaster provide valuable data and insights, the real magic happens when you combine these insights with a comprehensive SEO strategy. At Loganix, we specialize in crafting tailored SEO solutions that drive results.
Ready to elevate your SEO game?
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Explore ServicesWritten by Adam Steele on January 8, 2024
COO and Product Director at Loganix. Recovering SEO, now focused on the understanding how Loganix can make the work-lives of SEO and agency folks more enjoyable, and profitable. Writing from beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia.