Bing is the second largest search engine in the world. It doesn't get as much traffic as Google Search, but who says no to free traffic? Not only that, the number of searchers using Bing has actually increased in recent years.
By using Bing Webmaster Tools, you can optimize your website for Bing search results to get more traffic and grow your website. Bing Webmaster Tools recently had a major update this year, providing even more useful tools to improve your SEO.
Below, we'll take a detailed look at Bing Webmaster Tools so you can get started and improve your search traffic. You'll learn everything from adding a site to submitting a sitemap, running an SEO audit, and more.
What are Bing Webmaster Tools?
Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service that allows you to connect your website to the Bing crawler so that it appears in search results. If you have used Google Search Console before , you will find some similarities. Overall, it can help you monitor and improve your website's performance in Bing search results.
Here are some top reasons to use Bing Webmaster Tools:
- Monitor your website's performance and see ranking keywords
- See who’s linking to you and compare your off-page SEO to your competitors
- Uncover hidden keywords to improve your content strategy
- Control how Bing bots crawl your site
- 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 have a better understanding of what Bing Webmaster Tools does, let us show you how to get started with 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 on the Get Started button.
Next, you'll need to connect your 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 you have it set up) or add your site’s URL and click “Add” and manually connect the two. In this tutorial, we’ll use the manual method.
After adding the URL, you need to verify it. There are three ways to verify:
Upload the XML file to your web server
If you have access to your server environment, all you need to do is download the XML file and upload it to the root directory of your website.
To do this, you 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 just use one of the other methods.
Add an HTML meta tag to your website's homepage
For the second method, you need to add HTML meta tags to your website's html tags. If you are using WordPress, your WordPress theme may have a built-in option for adding the code to your header or footer.
If not, you can use a third-party plugin like Code Snippets . After installing and activating the plugin, you can add new code snippets using 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 a CNAME record where you purchased your domain or through cPanel.
Adding it through cPanel is very simple. First, log in to your cPanel hosting dashboard and click on Zone Editor .
After that, find your domain name and click the CNAME button. Then, all you have to do is add the code above.
Verify using WordPress SEO plugin
If you run a WordPress site and use a popular SEO plugin like Yoast , All in One SEO , or RankMath , then you can use that plugin to verify your site.
Yoast SEO
To verify your site with Yoast, navigate to Yoast SEO > Settings and click the Site Connections tab. Then enter the HTML meta tag you copied above.
It will look something like this:
Integrated SEO
To verify your site with All in One SEO, navigate to All in One SEO > General Settings . Next, click Webmaster Tools , then Microsoft Bing , and enter the HTML meta tag.
Your code will look similar to the following:
Ranking Mathematics
To verify your site with Rank Math, go to Rank Math SEO > General Settings . Then, click Webmaster Tools and enter the HTML meta tag in the Bing Webmaster Tools box.
It looks similar to the following code:
What Bing Webmaster Tools can do
Once your site is verified, you’ll be taken to the Bing Webmaster Tools main dashboard. Here you’ll immediately see the most popular tools, or you can browse all the available tools in the left sidebar.
Below, we’ll take a deep dive into its core functionality 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 performs in Bing searches.
You will see valuable data such as clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position. In addition, you will see the number of crawl requests, crawl errors, and indexed pages.
Below that, you’ll see a breakdown of the keywords you rank for, the number of impressions they get in searches, the number of clicks, CTR, and average position.
You can break this data down further by looking at individual page data. If you’ve been working on on-page optimization, this is where you’ll see if your efforts are bearing fruit.
Submit Website URL
You can submit your URL to Bing so that it can be 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 the URL Submit button on the dashboard home page:
Then click **the Submit URL button in the upper right corner, enter the URL you want to index in the pop-up box and click the **Submit button.
Submit a website sitemap
A sitemap essentially provides the Bing crawler with a list of URLs that you want indexed in search results. It helps search engines better understand your site structure and can improve your rankings.
To submit or view your sitemap, click the Sitemap button within the Bing dashboard or the menu button in the sidebar.
If you haven't submitted a sitemap yet, click the Submit Sitemap button and enter the URL of your sitemap.
Once Bing processes your sitemaps, you'll see the total number of sitemaps, any sitemaps with errors or warnings, and the total number of URLs crawled.
URL Inspection
By clicking the URL Check button or the menu navigation option, you can check any URL on your site. This will tell you the index status of the URL, any SEO issues, and the tags applied to the page.
All you have to do is enter the URL and click the Check button. You will then get a detailed analysis of all the issues with the URL. As you can see from the results below, the URL we analyzed has some SEO issues that can be improved.
You can also view the Live URL tab, which allows you to ensure that the URL and content being loaded match, and gives you details of how the page appears in 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 are preventing your site from ranking. Fixing these errors will help improve your rankings not only in Bing, but also in other search engines.
Simply click the Site Scan button on the home page or on the left menu, then click the Start New Scan button. You can set the scan scope to scan only specific URLs, a certain number of pages, or your entire site. Once the scan is complete, you will receive an email and be able to view the scan results in your dashboard.
The results show you high priority errors, warnings, and simple notifications.
Site exploration
The Site Explorer tool breaks down your site's structure from Bingbot's perspective. It provides a lot of details to help you better understand its search performance.
You can access data such as:
- Clicks and impressions on subfolders or pages on your site
- The number of backlinks pointing to this subfolder or page
- Fetch crawl data for pages/subfolders showing any crawl errors
- Total document size of the page or subfolder
- More content
Keyword Research
Clicking the "Keyword Research" tab takes you to the Keyword Research Tool. This tool uses keyword data from Bing and displays monthly search volume on Bing.
All you have to do is enter your keyword and click on the Get Details button. It will show you a breakdown of the monthly search traffic and which countries that traffic is coming from.
It also provides you with a list of related keywords, traffic estimates, and traffic trends. You can also view related problem keywords and newly discovered keywords.
Overall, this is very valuable data for a free tool and can be used to enhance your existing website content and content strategy.
Backlinks
The Backlink Tool shows you all the backlinks pointing to different pages on your website. You can sort them by domain, page, and anchor text.
In addition to viewing your existing backlink profile, you can also compare your website to your competitors. Click on the Similar Sites tab and enter your competitor’s URL.
You’ll then see how your site compares to your competitors in terms of off-page SEO and where you need to improve.
SEO Tips
The Recommendations tab provides you with actionable insights to help improve your site's ranking. These insights are automatically generated based on an analysis of your site. They refresh after you make changes and when any new SEO issues arise.
Configuration
The Configuration section lets you control how the Bing bot crawls your website.
Controlling the crawler
Clicking on the Crawl Control tab, you can change how and when the Bing crawler crawls your site. If you tend to get a lot of traffic during the day, then you can change the crawler to crawl your site at night.
Block URLs
Next, you can block specific site URLs from appearing in searches in the Block URLs tab. If you run an e-commerce store, you may find that duplicate URLs appear when searching for the same product. This happens when you have different product variations. Using this tool, you can block all of those URL variations from being indexed.
If you also notice other strange URLs being indexed, you can hide them by adding the URLs to the list.
Tools and Enhancements
In the Tools and Enhancements section of your dashboard , there are two additional tools to help you deal with website scraping and spam.
Robots.txt Tester
The robots.txt file tells search engines which pages should and should not be crawled. It can also block your entire site from being indexed. This tool allows you to view and edit your robots.txt file.
If you find that it’s blocking certain pages or certain pages from being indexed, simply remove them from the file and click Continue .
Verify Bingbot
Search engines like Google and Bing use robots to crawl your site and make your content available in search. However, this also means that there are malicious robots trying to crawl and break into your site or spam your site.
Fortunately, this tool lets you check the IP address, so you can make sure it's a Bing crawler and not some other malicious bot.
Security and Privacy
The Security & Privacy tab provides some additional tools to help resolve content infringements, manage users, and even improve site conversion rates.
Copyright Takedown Notice
If you discover that a site is stealing your content and passing it off as their own, you can use this tool to flag the copyright-infringing URL. Bing will investigate the claim and block the infringing content from appearing in search results.
If you have been accused of copyright infringement by another site, you can also submit a counter-notification from this screen.
User Management
If you have a larger team, you may have more users who need access to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Here you can control who can access the account and set the permission level. You can choose Administrator, Read/Write access, or Read Only.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a unique tool that shows you how users interact with your website. It includes a heat map feature that tracks where users click and scroll and how they use your website. It also records user sessions to see how visitors use your website in real time.
You can use this information to improve the design of your site, making it more user-friendly and, therefore, more likely to get visitors to convert. That conversion could be joining your email list, purchasing a product, or taking some other action.
Conclusion
Now you should have a better understanding of how to use Bing Webmaster Tools. Overall, it is 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 you get your fair share.
Plus, with advanced onsite SEO tools, technical SEO analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, and more, you can use what you learn to increase your search engine traffic on every search engine.
Now, if you haven’t explored Bing Webmaster Tools or submitted your site to Bing yet, it’s time to go ahead and do the necessary things. If you get stuck or have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below.
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