Microsoft bing is one of the most popular search engines that consumers use. When you have realized that the search engine is gaining popularity and there are so many scopes of opportunities created. It is an ideal strategy for business owners and SEO professionals to rank their websites on the Bing search engine. But to proceed with that, you need to know how to use Bing Webmaster Tools.
The goal of SEO professionals and website owners is to get traffic organically from the search engine. When you have that kind of objective, you should not leave any stone unturned. For example, you need to register your website across multiple search engines to gain the most traction. As you can’t underestimate the value of a search engine driving traffic to a website.
When it comes to using the Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools, it is almost alike to Google Webmaster Tools. All the functionality, steps and procedure is almost similar when it comes to the usage of Bing Webmaster Tools. Before we dive into how to use Bing Webmaster Tools, it is important to understand how to set up the account first.
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How to set up Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools?
Setting up the Bing Webmaster Tools is not as complex as you think. As the interface is so intuitive that anyone can register it without any hassle. Starting from creating a Bing Webmaster account to using the dashboard, the process is convenient. Below is a step-by-step guide for you to create Bing Webmaster Tools successfully.
1. Creating Bing Webmaster Tools account
You can register a Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools account using multiple methods. This registration process is important so that your website will follow all the guidelines that have been standardized by Bing. There are four ways in which you can create a Bing Webmaster Tools account.
Register using a Microsoft account
Using your Microsoft account, you can register for Bing Webmaster Tools. The Bing search engine is owned by Microsoft. You can easily create a Microsoft account by verifying your credentials like contact numbers and other addresses. It helps you to instantly integrate your account by using the verification code that is provided by Bing to be inserted on your website.
Register using a Facebook account
Microsoft Bing has made the process of registration so convenient that you can even use social login to set up your Webmaster Tools account. You simply need to click sign in with Facebook that is notified on the signup window. After that, the tool will ask permission to grant it. And once when you grant it, you will get registered on the Webmaster Tools account. Post that, they will give you a verification code that you need to insert on your website.
Register using google mail that is linked with your search console
This is one of the most popularly preferred choices of internet marketers. As they will be having the past Google account which is already linked with their search console. They need to use the same email ID to sign in through the Bing Webmaster Tools. When the Bing Webmaster Tools can fetch all the data from your Google mail, the setup process is very easy.
In addition to that, you will also get opportunities in getting the data exported from your search console to Bing webmasters. This will help in increasing the credibility of your Bing Webmaster account so that the indexation process fastens up. The best part about this registration process is that you don’t need to enter any manual verification code for verifying ownership.
Registering using other email IDs
If you don’t want to opt from the above three processes, there are always other ways to go around it. Because the Bing Webmaster account has provided a platform for registering to all email IDs. When you use an email ID to register the Webmaster account. They will provide you with a few ways in which you need to manually verify your ownership of the website.
2. Verifying Bing Webmaster Tools account
After creating the Microsoft Bing Webmaster account, now it’s time to verify it. Please note that if you are using a Google mail account that is linked to the search console, you need not worry about the verification process. Because the data is directly imported from the Google search console to Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools. If you are not using the Google mail process, then you need to follow the below-mentioned steps.
Verifying by XML sitemaps
In order to verify the Webmaster account, you need to download the XML sitemap that has been generated by Bing Webmaster. You need to proceed in uploading the XML sitemap to your website server. After uploading the XML sitemap, now it’s your turn to hit the verify button. The Bing search crawler will scan your website files and when it finds the XML sitemap that has been uploaded, your account gets verified.
Related: Website crawlability issues and solutions
Verifying account by HTML meta tag
This is one of the easiest verification processes. When you register yourself on a webmaster account, the dashboard will provide you with the HTML meta tag that you need to copy. After copying the HTML tag, you need to insert the HTML authentication code to the <head> section of your homepage. After adding the tag, now you need to click the verify button. Ensure that you leave the HTML tag permanently because if you remove it, the verification process stops.
Verifying it through CNAME records
This process is slightly complicated as you need to edit your CNAME record from your domain registrar account. The process to follow is that you will be getting a CNAME record that is provided by Bing Webmaster. After that, you need to proceed to your DNS section of the domain account dashboard and then you need to add CNAME. The DNS record propagation with webmasters will take time depending upon the bandwidth of your server.
How to use Bing Webmaster Tools?
There are many instances where you can use Bing Webmaster Tools to successfully scale your website on search engines. The functionality is almost similar to the Google Webmaster Tools. And when we look at the features list, it is more adequate. Below are some of the major use cases that you can use Bing Webmaster Tools for.
1. Using the Bing Webmaster Tools for analyzing indexation
One of the most popularly used features from the Bing Webmaster Tools is analyzing website indexing. Marketers regularly check how many pages have been indexed on the Bing search engine and what are the missing pages out of the list.
You can find the section where you can submit multiple URLs for URL inspection. Let me make it clear that you can submit 10 URLs in one day. And when you submit the URLs within the section, it takes some time to propagate and scan the web pages. It is one of the most beneficial features that you can use from Bing Webmaster Tools.
This also helps to fasten up the indexation process and lets you appear on the Bing search engine as quickly as possible. You won’t find this feature in the Google search console.
In the same way, you can also submit the URLs if you want the search engine to block them. It is all doable from the Bing Webmaster dashboard through the removal URLs feature.
2. Tracking search performance of your website
You can use Bing Webmaster Tools to check the SEO report of your website. The dashboard lets you notify whether there are any issues, recommendations, and opportunities that you can apply for your website. You can segregate the attribute-based report on the day, month, and year. Some of the major parameters that you can track the performance of your website are as follows.
Clicks
This is a metric in which you will get to know how many people have clicked your website from the Bing search engine. It basically gives you an idea that how many users are you can also call traffic that you have achieved from the search engine.
Impressions
Here is a metric that lets you know how many times your website search engine listing has been when a user has typed the keyword. This helps you to know the reasons for web visitors not clicking your website.
The average click-through rate
You can check how many people have clicked your search engine listing based on the total impressions that you have received. The page title is the main thing that influences the average click-through rate.
Average position
From this feature, you can track the keyword ranking position of your website. One of the important features tracked by SEO professionals. Based on that you can optimize your off-page link building activities so that it ranks better.
Crawl requests and errors
You will get to know how many page crawl requests have been made by the website. Also, it lets you know whether there was any issue while crawling the web pages.
Indexed pages
Through this feature, you will come to know how many web pages of your website have been successfully indexed on the Bing search engine.
3. Lets you explore your website
The Bing Webmaster Tools provides you with a platform known as Site Explorer. This function helps you to explore all the website files that include web page documents, images, and other related files. It gives you complete insights based on how many pages have been successfully indexed on the Bing search engine.
The data of web pages have been segregated according to your categories. It makes it more convenient to explore your website files and makes you understand every page in detail. Because whenever you select any webpage from the Explorer, you will get information about Impressions, clicks, crawl date, and the document size.
You can also find information such as how many backlinks have been received to a particular page. It also allows you to export the data in the format of a Microsoft CSV. This can help you as a tracker and maintain a report about your website performance on the Bing search engine.
4. Provides you SEO tools
This feature is one of its kind because other Webmaster Tools don’t provide you with such a platform. And the Bing Webmaster Tools provide you with this completely free of cost. Below are the major SEO tools that you get from this platform.
Backlinks
You can check the backlinks that you have received for your website. It also helps in distinguishing the report between similar sites from your domain. It acts as a backlink audit tool for your website. If you find that you are receiving spam backlinks, you can use the disavow feature to exclude those backlinks that are directed to your domain.
Keyword research
One of the most creative platforms that are provided by a Webmaster tool. You can execute keyword research functions and forecast the search volume and competition based on it. It also allows you to research keywords based on region, language, and the device platform. The report can be extracted based on trends and calendar year also.
Website scan
This tool acts like an on-page website auditor tool. Through this tool, you can analyze the issues encountered in the on-page SEO part. Some of the major parameters that the tool checks are page title, meta description, heading tags, links, and image alt description. All this data is generated when you perform a website scan from the Bing Webmaster dashboard.
5. Website enhancement tools
There are many other features that are provided by the Bing webmaster tool. Some of the important features that let you enhance your website are as below.
Robots.txt and sitemap tester tool
Like any other webmaster, it provides a platform where you can test the robots.txt. It lets you know whether there is any content that is not allowing your website to get scanned by the Bing search engine.
Also, you can even check whether the site map is easily accessible to the bing search engine. You need to submit the sitemap and then you will get the data of the pages that are getting indexed from the sitemap.
Copyright issues
The bing Webmaster alerts you whenever you have received any copyrights for the content that you have put out on the web. This feature is utilized by other website owners to raise a copyright issue if you have copied any content from them directly. If the reason is void, you can raise an argument and participate in the local federal court.
Manage users
This platform allows you to add multiple users to manage the Bing Webmaster platform. You can add users on the basis of their email id and assign the required role. It can be the administrative role where they can control the webmaster completely. Or assign read-only roles so that they can only view the properties of the Webmaster tool.
Control crawlers
You can execute the crawl control function based on the frequency of the search engine that can crawl your website. You can define the date and time for the Bing search engine crawler to scan your website. It is one of the most convenient features where you can make any changes out of the time that you have notified for Bing search crawler. You will also get the crawl rate report based on the time and date the crawler has gone across your website.
To sum it up
If you have used the Google search console, the functionality almost seems to be identical for you. You will not find any major difference when you use the Bing webmaster tool. The steps to use this platform are so convenient that it can be operated by users who don’t need any technical knowledge.
Ensure that you regularly check your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard so that you can keep track of all the metrics. This can be analyzing SEO reports, indexing level, and the traffic incoming based on the keyword queries.
There can be other use cases also which are not covered in this blog. As the list of activities that you can work on optimizing the on-page and off-page activities of your website are endless. The best way to go forward is to keep on exploring the functions and see what is productive for your website.