When we are talking about Search Engine Optimization of a website, Google automatically comes into our mind. Why not, it makes sense but we need to optimize our site for all the search engines not just for only one. Google is the most popular search engines without any doubt. But data statistics are showing that traffic coming from the Bing searches is increasing.
All marketers run after Google but keep one thing in mind that Bing has also lower competition. And Bing has the decent market share nearly 21.3% in the US which includes Yahoo searches which are powered by Bing. Bing is much more open about the ranking factors as compared to Google.
Here in this post, you will come to know about Bing Webmaster tools which will definitely help bloggers and website owners to get their site on the reliable Bing search index and getting more traffic from Bing.
Submitting your site to Bing Webmaster tools:
Bing webmaster tool is a free service by Microsoft basically for the webmasters from submitting their site to getting a complete SEO report. You will get many features in Bing webmaster tool which is not available in Google webmaster tool. Really there is no reason you will find in not submitting your site to Bing Webmaster tool.
Step 1:All you need to create a free account or you have the option to use your existing windows live ID for login to the Webmaster account. Once after the sign-up and account creation process. The first step will be to add your website and verify your ownership.
After the submission of your website all you need to do is to add the details related to site and ownership and website owner details and many more. You should create the sitemap of your website using Google XML sitemap plugin. Then add the sitemap link in the site page info page. The need of providing sitemap link is because it will help Bing bots to do the deep crawling and index more pages on your site.
The best part is that you can even set email communication preferences about the health issues of your website. You can set a daily alert if you are having a high traffic site and you will get notified regarding any site issue.
Right after the filling of the details just click on Save and automatically you will be redirected to Bing Webmaster tool dashboard. In the dashboard, you will see a message " Site Ownership has not been verified, verify now ". Just click on to verify now and use any method to verify your website. You can go through these processes out there:
- File upload <XML File>
- Adding Meta tag in Header
- CNAME record DNS
Currently, if you are using WordPress SEO by Yoast, you can easily add the content part from the Meta tag verification an add it into WordPress SEO dashboard.
Site Verified on Bing the What next?
As already we have submitted our site to Bing Webmaster tool and successfully done the verification. Now the next step is to do the configurations of few settings listed below that will definitely provide an edge.
Submission of more Sitemap to Bing:
You can create the separate sitemap for Images and Videos and the best part is that Bing bots are smart and will pick all sitemap from an existing website. The process of generating Image and Video sitemap is very simple you can sue Image sitemap and Video sitemap plugins. Just go to Dashboard > Configure My Site > Sitemap and you can and definitely, you can add the new sitemap to Bing.
Submission of Individual URL:
Somehow if you have submitted a completely new site then it will take time for Bing bots completely crawl and index your site completely. You can just go and manually few links here.
You can submit 50 URLs submissions per month and daily you can add only 10, yes the limit is set is by Bing.
Ignore URL parameters:
If somehow your website pages are indexed with URL parameter in Bing search then you should add this parameter here. If here Bing populates few URL parameters by defaults just like Google Webmaster tools do.
Crawl Control:
One of the interesting features of the Bing Webmaster Tool, they will allow you to control when Bing bots should crawl your site more. So it totally depends on you, to set time when there is the busiest time of your blog and the best part is that Bing bots will select the time to crawl the site more if somehow your website is less busy. And this step will be useful for high traffic sites along with the sites with limited hosting bandwidth.
Block URL's and Directory in Bing search:
Here bots started indexing process of your WordPress content, tags and categories folders. Decide to remove all tags and categories or any other directory from the Bing search. This section definitely helps you to do the same.
You have the option use block the URL section and stop the indexing of any page or the directory. It will take 90 days you have manually removed the URLs and you will be getting Email notification 8 days before the completion of the 90 days. Now you have to decide whether keep them out of the index or let the Index in Bing.
Granting of Access to your Webmaster tool to other users:
If you have WordPress setup then you can quickly add your client site using Bing Webmaster Tools. You can give him Admin access later. The best part is that you can even manage your blog with a team or partner, now you have the choice to give them access to your site webmaster tool under the user's sections. You will provide these three roles:
- Administrator access
- Read and modification
- Real only
Follow the above guide listed above and improve your search engines visibility in Bing tool.
Also, read:Conclusion: Guide To Bing Webmaster Tools For SEO
You can do many more things with Bing to improve your Search engine visibility in Bing Search. Just go and explore the Bing Webmaster tools and submit a site to Bing. Now you have all the information regarding Bing Webmaster tools and the submission of a site.
Feel free to ask if you are stuck anywhere in between in the comment section. I hope you like this post bloggers guide to Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO. Show your love and support just by sharing this post on all trending social media platforms.