How to Use Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO – Beginners Guide

4 min read SEOMediaWorld Staff

When optimizing a website for search engines, you shouldn’t focus on just one. Instead, consider optimizing for all available search engines. While each search engine has different algorithms to avoid web spam in search results, Google is the most popular, followed by Bing, Yahoo, and others. Microsoft is also working to improve Bing’s search engine results page (SERP) by incorporating social signals and other ranking factors similar to Google’s.

If you’re creating a blog or website, don’t limit your optimization efforts to Google alone—optimize for Bing as well.

Bing Webmaster Tools: An Alternative to Google Webmaster Tools

Just like Google Search Console, Bing offers Bing Webmaster Tools to help website owners submit sitemaps, crawl and index web pages, and disavow links. By setting up your website on Bing Webmaster Tools, you can enhance its visibility on Bing’s search engine.

Submitting & Verifying Your Site on Bing Webmaster Tools

Steps to Add and Verify Your Site:

  1. Log in to your Bing Webmaster Tools account.
  2. Go to “Add a Site“ and enter your blog’s URL and Sitemap URL.
  3. Set crawl preferences (optional) to specify when Bingbot should visit your site.
  4. Click “Add” to proceed to site verification.
Adding Site to Bing Webmaster Tools

Verification Methods:

  • Uploading a Bing XML file to your server.
How to Verify Site on Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Copying and pasting a meta tag into your site’s homepage.
  • Adding a CNAME record to your DNS settings.

If you use Yoast SEO, go to SEO > Dashboard > Webmaster Tools to verify your website by pasting the meta tag verification code.

Once you’ve added the meta tag and clicked “Verify” on Bing Webmaster Tools, your site will be verified. You can then submit additional sitemaps for better indexing.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Bing

Once your site is verified, you can submit additional sitemaps for indexing.

  • If you’re using Yoast SEO, it automatically generates sitemaps for categories, tags, and posts.
Bing Verification Code on Seo By Yoast
  • You can also generate image and video sitemaps using plugins.
  • Find the “Sitemaps” option under “Configure My Site” in your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.
  • Submit your sitemaps for images, mobile pages, and videos to help Bing index your content faster.

Submitting New Posts to Bing

Submitting URLs to Bing Webmaster Tools

If you’ve just published a new blog post and want Bing to index it quickly:

  • Use the Submit URLs feature in Bing Webmaster Tools.
  • You can submit up to 50 new URLs per month.
  • This works similarly to Google’s Fetch as Google tool, ensuring your new content appears on Bing’s SERP faster.

Geo-Targeting Specific Content

Geo Targeting Blog using Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools offers geo-targeting, allowing you to target your content to specific countries.

  • You can geo-target your homepage, subdomains, directories, or individual pages.
  • Just select “Page, Domain, or Subdomain”, enter the URL, choose a region, and submit.
  • This helps Bing display your content appropriately for different geographical audiences.

Ignoring URL Parameters in Bing

Some URLs with tracking parameters may cause duplicate content issues. Bing Webmaster Tools allows you to ignore URL parameters to prevent such problems.

Examples of problematic URLs:

  • yourblog.com/page&sessionId=somevalue
  • yourblog.com/product&wt.srch=1

To avoid duplicate content, use the Ignore URL Parameters feature in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Controlling Bingbot Crawling

Bing allows you to control how frequently Bingbot crawls your website.

  • Adjust crawl speed during high-traffic times to manage bandwidth.
  • Use a custom crawl pattern to set different crawling rates throughout the day.
  • Note: Your robots.txt file takes precedence over this setting.

Blocking URLs from Bing Search Results

Like Google’s Remove URLs tool, Bing lets you block specific URLs from appearing in search results.

  • Blocked URLs remain hidden for 90 days.
  • Bing will notify you 8 days before the expiration, so you can renew the block if needed.

To recover from Negative SEO or algorithm updates, use Bing’s Disavow Links tool.

  • This tells Bing to ignore low-quality or spammy links pointing to your site.
  • You can disavow links by URL, domain, or directory.

If you haven’t considered Bing Webmaster Tools for your SEO strategy, now is the time! Optimizing for Bing can drive additional organic traffic to your site.

How do you use Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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