Do you know how to submit your site to the Bing webmaster tools? Bing offers some different insights on your website then Google does. Learning how to set up Bing webmaster tools will help you to check if your site is coming up well on Bing and the Yahoo networks.
Not only that but recently the new Bing Chat feature has put Microsoft’s search engine in the spotlight recently and pushed usage to an important new milestone. Bing reached an active 100 million daily active users.
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Bing Webmaster Tools For Your SEO Monitoring Needs
Today Bing and Yahoo account for almost 10% of all web traffic. It may continue to rise with their new chat service.
Why leave that amount to chance for your website or blog to be found in search? Not only that but some voice-activated search uses Bing as well and you can voice search right on Bing from your desktop.
Bing webmaster tools you can use to increase your blog’s SEO.
What These Bing Tools Can Do For Your Blog or Website
H1 Tags
Bing Webmaster Tools will let you know if you have to miss your h1 tags on a page. This is an important one for SEO and the look of a page as well.
However, I have not seen this guidance coming from Google Console, have you? I love this one! You can find it under their SEO reports section.
HTML Size
Bing Webmaster tools let you know if your page is too heavy.
Your web images could be too heavy or your scripts. Bing will let you know about it in their SEO reports section.
Multiple Tags
If you have multiple tags on a page these tools will let you know. That is another no-no from the major search engines.
However, you may have created your website years ago and did not realize you had multiple tags. That’s why I love seeing these and fixing them!
Description In Headers
Have you ever forgotten to put a description in your head? Bing will remind you of that.
You could have been so busy designing the new website that you forgot or started it before you know all the ins and outs of SEO.
Sitemaps In Bing Webmaster Tools
Both Google and Bing webmaster tools will let you know if your sitemaps are updated or not. Bing seems to need them updated more often so do check in there at least monthly.
Next, you can set up an email notification from them when you need to update your sitemap. Nice! They even offer a beta plugin for this if you need it.
Keyword Research In Bing Webmaster Tools
Did you know you can do your keyword research right in the Bing webmaster tools? No need to go anywhere else.
You can research globally or via country.
Title and Meta Description Length
Next, you may notice if you have the wrong length for your titles or meta descriptions. Again, if you had written pages, posts, or product descriptions years ago it may differ today.
Bing webmaster tools will help you find incorrect meta descriptions and titles lengths quickly so you can fix them!
How to Set Up Your Bing Webmaster Tools
Go to Bing Webmaster Tools to sign up today for your insights and tools. You have to get a code to put on your site or blog for tracking.
Once it has been verified you are ready to start analyzing. It will take time for Bing to crawl your site.
Then, they will send you an email with a report for you once it is complete.
Submit Your Site to Bing
You can submit your site to Bing webmaster tools and the pages of your site will be crawled. I do that now for any new pages I may add to my websites. Furthermore, you can do a monthly crawl as well to find new errors.
Notice you get rewarded with a $50 credit for search advertising? Another Bing reward.
SEO Reports to Guide You
Once you are all verified you can begin to see their new full SEO reports. These SEO reports are great to download and track your progress over time. According to Bing:
“SEO Reports contains some of the most common page-level recommendations to improve your site’s ranking. These recommendations are based on a set of approximately 15 SEO Best Practices to help you get started. SEO best practices are a set of tasks designed to help improve a website’s search engine rankings.
The SEO Reports are generated automatically every other week and be available through your webmaster account. Using the same set of SEO Best Practices as the on-demand SEO Analyzer tool, we create bulk reports for all sites listed in your Webmaster account.
Now that is a tool you can use for all your SEO efforts whether you have a blog or an e-commerce website.
If you do have a Shopify account, Bing has more tools for you now with their Shopify integration.
Other Webmaster Tool Tidbits
- Both tools allow you to set up URL parameters.
- Not only that, but both webmaster tools offer link tools, they show you which sites are linking to you. They both allow you to export files into a spreadsheet so you can keep better track of them if you like.
- One thing Bing Webmaster Tools does not do is update quickly as Google does with their stats in the webmaster tools. Google updates daily and Bing takes longer sometimes days or weeks longer.
- Both these tools are FREE to use and offer a lot of information about your website or blog. Why not take advantage of the webmaster tools for Free?
Bing Webmaster Plugin for Indexing
Now you can use a plugin from Bing for easy indexing!
Your Turn
Have you used Bing Webmaster tools for your website or blog recently? Do you know how to set up Bing webmaster tools now? It’s easy to do.
Finally, I’d love to know more in the comments below if you use Bing or Google webmaster tools for your blog or website.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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Hey Lisa,
I never used Bing webmaster tool but after reading this post, it really offers some good features and now I am thinking to give it a try. Thanks for sharing this post with us.
You are welcome Sudipto, I like using it as well as Google’s, they both are different and give you different things you can learn and adjust. Let me know how you like it!
Thanks Lisa for sharing this information with us. I didn’t know that there was this much difference between Google Webmaster tools and Bing webmaster tools. Thanks for sharing the information with us. Let me try keyword researching on bing webmaster tools.
You are wecome Ninthin, I hope it will help you using Bing webmaster tools as well. Welcome to Inspire to Thrive and have a great day!
Thanks for the stats Lisa. To be true I really do not have any idea about any other webmaster tool Google’s webmaster tool & I was a happy customer of it. But now I feel what I was missing, 18% is quite a big percentage, I never targeted it. I am really gonna use Bing’s webmaster tool because of my niche content, this post was an eye opener for me Lisa. Thanks for this beautiful share, keep sharing.
You are welcome Drakes. 18% is nothing is sleeze at right? I found it helpful and still do as it offers different things than Google.
Hey Lisa,
I feel better about using Google webmaster tools, not just because it is more popular but i think Google is larger, therefore the support is bigger and more consistent, the online forums have more answers since allot more people uses Google products.
i personally love Google analytics and i believe Google’s api for coding got to be more advanced and better than any other!
i just hate it when i’m stuck at a little bug coding with an api and no answers can be found anywhere online because very few people uses it.
Many thanks and Best wishes!
Hi Mitch, you may not have today, I just read that they are not showing the keywords today I knew that would happen with everything they are doing. I like having at least 20% with Bing to have a clue what keywords are being used to drive views. They (keywords) may go away completely in the future and SEO will surely change. It maybe a whole new ballgame. Thanks for coming by and for your input on it Mitch!
Thanks a lot Lisa, Now i know how to use Bing for getting better results.
You are welcome Yogita, glad you found it useful and welcome to Inspire To Thrive. Have a great day.
Oh, Google. I love you, but…
So, now I know Bing has webmaster tools, too. And knowledge is power, right? Thing is, it feels like one more techy thing to do, and as much as I can get jazzed by techy things, this feels overwhelming – and that’s my perception and problem to address. When I feel like it. *stomps foot and pouts*
No, really, Lisa. I appreciate the information, because I actually do like to feel as though I have a little leg up in the tech department, and people like you and Adrienne aid and abet me in that area. Thank you!
You are welcome Ellen and sign up for them when you have an hour or so – so you can slowly work your way through it. That’s how I did it. And it took several tries on this blog to get the code in the right place. I wasn’t a techy person when I started but I’ve learned to keep trying until you get and give yourself time for that. Patience and persistence. Thanks for coming by and have a great rest of the week, Happy October!
Hey Lisa, I saw you mention Bing tools on another comment and was thinking I need to get on there. I am registered but have never really payed it any attention. Now with Google starting to hide everything from us, it is time to take a look at the other options – thanks
You are welcome Ashley, I had been using them for a few years but not often. They don’t update as often as Google but I love how they tell you other things like the headers tags, etc. And know the keywords there will become more important. Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful day.
Hi Lisa,
Keywords research in Bing? This must be properly put in the new context of that sudden Google’s move of encrypting all search data for all non-paying users. Bing is an alternative, indeed but not as good as Gogole as Bing has a smaller size of the market compared to Google.
This raises the important question: What other means of evaluating people’s needs and want do we have apart from keyword research?
I think this needs a special, separate blog posts.
Have a wonderful day
Hi Silviu, Bing webmaster tools have been around a while. I was working on this post and when the Google “thing” happened I knew I had to finish it so others could have an alternative too. 20% is still 20% right? That would definitely need a seperate post Silviu, thanks for the suggestion. I hope you have a great day ahead there.
Honestly speaking, Lisa…these Webmaster Tools is giving me a headache. I don’t really use this much. But I know it’s important. I sometimes check my stats here but not much. I just read what HubSpot posted there by following your link and it just went “whooosh” on my head. I have no idea what they’re trying to say.
Only I know Google is being difficult and now they want “encrypted keyword searches.”
I tell ya Google is always up to “surprises” which amazes me greatly. So I went to Bing Webmaster Tools and bookmark it. I will prolly try to figure this out. And why do I even need this? I thought I wasn’t writing for any Search Engine out there. But the more they CHANGE things for me the more difficult they make this for me, for us. UGH.
Angela
Hi Angela, I know what you mean. I just went through my merchant center feed and that gave me a headache, another something else to learn for the retail sites. If you write quality content and you do, and often at least 1 per week you should be okay. Of course you need to have social signals too which I think you do. It all takes time and will change often as Google keeps on updating! Some of the updates are good and others not so good. I like to find a few quick things in both webmaster tools to help, a simple one was the extra h1 tag I had on a page or two. Stuff like that, find the simple stuff first and then go back later. Thanks for coming by Angela and have a great day ahead.
Hello Lisa,
Well to be honest i haven’t used Bing webmaster tools till now, the reason behind it is ” i thought google analytics is enough for managing and checking stats of a site.
But after reading your post it seems like i missed so many things,
thanks for the share.
You are welcome Kuldeep and welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Yes, Bing can offer you different things for your website’s SEO. I learned several things using them vs. Google webmaster tools and thought I should share it. Have a great week ahead there!
Hi Lisa,
Super breakdown! It is funny, I never once used GA because it did not agree with my sites. Never got it too work. I downloaded a great, helpful, easy to use WP stats plug in last week. Love it! But I will take a deeper look at Bing because as you mentioned, almost 20% of all traffic flows through Bing and Yahoo. That’s a ton of views.
Thanks for sharing Lisa!
Ryan
Thank you Ryan. Yes, the stats are different than WordPress and I’m off more for this blog but for my retail sites they are invaluable. Bing is great because it gives you different info especially on the title tags, etc. Love to know how you make out with the Bing tools Ryan. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Hello Lisa nice write up, I have seen Google’s webmaster tools but never really spent time using them how useful do you find them? Google is so large I always have trouble locating anything. Thanks for your review as always very helpful
Rob, I find them VERY useful especially for my retail sites. I find duplicate titles, more broken links, keywords suggestions and what’s workomg well and what isn’t working well with my keywords. I visit almost daily – not so much for this blog – maybe weekly or bi-weekly for this one. But it does offer a wealth of info on your websites and blogs. Same for Bing. I hope to visit your new site today! Sounds exciting….Have a great rest of the weekend too Rob.
Well , I’ve explored Bing Webmaster tools and Google Webmaster tools in depth . I feel that Bing’s tool set is way better than Google’s webmaster tools . Microsoft is trying very hard to improve the Bing search engine by adding new features to it every now and then ..which is helping Bing to increase its search engine market share. Thanks for sharing the information .
-Pramod
Hi Pramod, good to know you feel Bing’s tools are better. I liked how I learned different things that needed to be fixed and adjusted for my websites. Thanks for coming by and for your input on this one. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Hi Lisa,
I wonder when BING search engine will be able to compete with Google earch engine, 18% search traffic is not bad anyway but they can do more.
Hi Adesanmi, I think when more people get tired of Google changes, etc they will switch. Also Bing offers rewards for those that use Bing – when they rae logged in via Micoresoft or Facebook. Thanks for coming by and have a great weekend!
Hi Lisa
I signed up to Bing Webmaster Tools a few months ago and then forgot about it!
It seems they offer quite a few tools that Google don’t so I need to start looking at Bing as well.
Thanks for the reminder Lisa.
Have a great weekend!
You are welcome Tim, love to hear how you make out with Bing webmaster tools too. They do offer some different things so it’s worth a look at. Have a great weekend too – I can’t believe it’s come so fast again. Looking forward to the great weather we are supposed to have.
Some of the time we also using bing for the searching purpose. As much i know about the difference between bing and google webmaster is when it comes to web tools and analytics Google leads, but Bing is a close second. The comprehensive Google Webmaster tools offer exhaustive information for knowing how your site is doing and how often does it come up on Google SERPs. On the other hand, Bing doesn’t offer exhaustive information on site indexing, crawl errors and malware. Now the one area where Bing is an improvement on Google is visibility to indexed sub-domains. As a webmaster, you don’t have to register and verify each sub domain and view it individually.
Oh yes, that’s great as you can get rewards too for searching on Bing, I did a post a while back on it. Bing does offer those crawl errors too and I love that indexing sub-domains too. You do have to register each, why do you think you do not? Thanks for your input too.
Hi Lisa,
Just want to point something out. The combined Yahoo! Bing Network query share according to comScore is 29% in the US, reaching about 163M searchers with 54M not using Google at all.
Sources:
Interesting Andrew, thanks for the input on that. I appreciate it very much. That’s quite a few not using Google.
Wow Lisa.
First I had no clue that other search engines have their own analytics. Call me stupid but no one ever told me that and I feel as dumb as a stone! oops: I will definitely go check it out. The problem is no one ever said anything and most people only focus on Google. Get on Google and that is the key. I have to start paying more attention to Yahoo and Bing!
Thanks for the reminder. This was very important for me.
Barbara
Hi Barbara, I’m not calling you that. You can sign up for both webmaster tools and analytics with both Google and Bing. You are welcome and let me know if you have any problems signing up Barbara – thanks for coming by and have a great weekend ahead.
Hi Lisa,
How are you doing dear friend? Good to be back on your blog. I missed a couple of posts but trust me, I’ll check them out.
Now, I have not used bing as much as I use google but I do get traffic from bing. Perhaps, their webmaster tool will help me grab more traffic from it.
I appreciate you sharing this information with us Lisa.
Do have a wonder week
Hi Enstine, no worries, we can’t always make it to every blog each day – not an easy feat by any means! I do like the variety that Bing offers on their webmaster tools vs. Google. They do point out different things that can help. Let me know how you make out with it Enstine and have a good day there.
Hello Lisa,
I added my website and its sitemaps to Bing Webmaster the same day I added those to Google Webmaster tools. Everything looks great from configuration perspective.
I have also used the features where it helped me improve my HTML code. It is an excellent tool for such purposes for sure.
However, when it comes to traffic, it sends me 1 or two referrals a day when Google sends 100+. It sends me zero referral traffic some days.
So, overall, I am not very impressed with it. But I am there… just in case.
Have you found any trick that can generate some traffic through Bing’s search engine? What percentage of traffic do you receive through Bing? Just curious…
Regards,
Kumar
Kumar, glad it’s all configured great for you. I like those features too to improve HTML code. I get about 15%-20% traffic from Bing/yahoo and almost 30% sales from them on my retail sites. I would be the sales per click ratio is higher for me from Bing than Google. I never even thought about it in that way until you asked and I researched. Very interesting point Kumar. Are you selling on your site?e And if you are do you know which draws the most sales?
Actually, I don’t sell anything on my website yet although I’m working on some products in pipeline. It will be interesting to see how it maps. But since you said your traffic is about 20%, I am now forced to investigate as to why isn’t Bing sending traffic to my website because for my website, Bing traffic is about less than 2%.
Thank you for responding. I now have a job to do.
Hi Lisa,
Wow, it looks like Bing Webmaster is pretty different from Google’s but we could say that since they are so different they complement each other.
I’ve never even attempted to check it out yet, but your post certainly makes me want to.
As always, thanks for the great tips and the step by step.
Hi Sylviane, yes good word, they complement each other. Let me know if you do have questions when you check it out and you are welcome. I find it helpful and wanted to share it with my readers here. I hope you have a great day and good weekend ahead.
A friend and I were talking several weeks ago about this Lisa so I went and signed up but it will NOT verify my damn site. I tried for days and finally just gave up. That’s what I hate about some of this stuff and come on, it’s the same darn process I had to do with Google authorship so what’s the big deal. Has anyone else had issues with this?
I spent several hours in there looking around and figuring things out just because I wanted to get a sense of things from that search engine because I’m getting traffic from them. I just don’t know why I’m having such a hard time.
I was also surprised to hear that it was Bing/Yahoo. I thought I was just signing up with Bing but I definitely learned something new yet again with that one.
I have good intentions and hope I can eventually get this resolved. I just gave up and haven’t gone back. Who has time to waste with that!
Great write up though.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, I did too in the beginning but it was the coding, I had it in the wrong place. Maybe that’s it? But it only took moments to verify I didn’t have to wait. One of those technical headaches if not done right. I may have one more site I need to work on that myself. I will poke around and let you know if I find out more. I hear you on the time issue Adrienne, I always feel like I’m playing beat the clock at times. Thanks for coming by and let me know if you do try it again. Have a good day ahead.
Hey Lisa,
I thought I had it in the right place and even just uploaded it to my server which is so easy but it wouldn’t verify that either. They give you what three different ways to do this is one or two don’t work. I tried them all, am I that dumb? Okay, don’t answer that. lol… Maybe I’ll give it another go this weekend. Urggggg
Thanks!
~Adrienne
Adrienne, I had same issue in the beginning too. I believe I had to go to theme editor to get it right. This is what I had found Adrienne: Add the code to your theme’s header.php file after the opening and before
WordPress won’t let me finish the code – I will email you the rest.
I have used Bing webmaster tools in the past. I think (if my memory is right), I used it mainly for fixing errors. It was a great tool. $50 Free credits? That’s one other reason why I should try it, again. Is it only for new users? I already have an account there. I don’t have any sites in there right now, so I suppose I should get the reward.
Anyways, I definitely have to set this up when I launch my blog. Thanks for the reminder, Lisa.
By the way, why does it say Bing/Yahoo network? Did Microsoft acquire Yahoo while I was on a blogging vacation? Or are they just partnering up?
Hi Jeevan, welcome back. Yes for new users. Not a bad credit, right? I believe it only says bing but should apply to Yahoo since it is one in search now and has been for a while. If I find out differently I will let you know. Thanks for coming by and for your input Jeevan.
Great article Lisa!
I have Bing webmaster tools set up, but I admit that I rarely check in to see how things are going over there.
I do track my rankings for certain keywords for Bing, Google and Yahoo using Market Samurai but I have little information on why they fluctuate so drastically on Bing and Yahoo.
At least with Google, they tell you all the animals they are sending to attack your rankings. I have no idea what beasts Bing is using.
Thanks for the reminder and giving all the additional details.
Thank you Ileane, I really appreciate that. You are not alone on that one. Do you get their email now to hop back over there? I’d be interested to know the more you poke around in Bing if you do find out more on the animals they are sending you Ileane. I think they do take longer to index and rank there compared to Google. But I love the additional info they provide and find it most helpful. Have a great Thursday and enjoy the upcoming weekend Ileane.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for the reminder to get over to Bing and start checking out exactly what they offer, like the Keyword tool.
Funnily enough I had an email from Bing last week saying “come back”…. as I set it up some time ago but always use Google WMT instead.
I did follow the email link and take a look around and wondered whether they’d updated their offerings since my last visit as I was really impressed by everything I found. However, there was so much there that I thought I’d leave it for another day…. Hence thanking you for the reminder.
I’m really pleased that you’ve gone into detail here Lisa as I never saw the duplicate tags feature, which i think is great. It really allows us to fine tune how we apply ourselves and the choices we make.
Remember ages ago I said about Google falling out with me…. Well during that time I had a call from Attracta, who I discussed the issue with. They told me I had duplicate tags on my posts and pointed out where to find the details of them.
So during my clean up I removed any that we’re spot on, along with all the broken & dead links, spam comments and dodgey images…
The result was that Google started liking me again….. For now,
Thanks Lisa, have a great week.
Barry
Hi Barry, yes I bet many forget about Bing and go directly to Google but almost 20% of traffic is nothing to sneeze at, right? I like those emails, they do help me too to get over there. duplicate tags are big. I still have a few issues here I have to adjust but I always work on the retail site first and it’s really helped, thank goodness. That’s what got me so excited to work on this post the other day and then Google came out with that on the day before I was going to publish this. I’m glad your site is doing well now for Google Barry, let’s hope it stays that way. Enjoy the rest of your week too Barry, it’s almost the weekend!
I must admit I didnt even know Bing offered this – And I dont even check where my site ranks on Bing.
They’re not so big here in the UK.
Will sign up and take a look.
Hi Mark, yes do take a look. I think you will like it as it gives a lot of hints as what can be done to improve a website or blog. Good luck and let mek now if you have any questions. Welcome to Inspire to Thrive!
I didn’t know all this about BING’s webmaster tools. I like how you detailed their features here :).
I do check Google webmaster tools quite often and I’ll admit I don’t pay much attention to BING but after reading this I’m gonna add it to my to-do list to make sure I check it….too bad they don’t update as often as Google though but I guess monthly update isn’t so bad.
Thanks for putting this together for us Lisa. Happy Wednesday. Hope you’re having a great week!
Hi Corina, it’s great as it tells you more about your site and what needs to be done. You are welcome and so far it’s been a pretty good week overall. I hope yours has too and that you enjoy the upcoming weekend – it will be here before we know it!
Hi Lisa
I hope you are having a wonderful week, so far!
Well to be honest with you, all this is a learning curve. I am still in the process of learning all Google has to offer. Learning so much at this time, but I will check out what Bing has to offer.
Thank you for the detailed list.
Gladys recently posted The Art of Forgiveness.
Thank you Gladys, so far so good. It sure is flying by. It does take a while to learn so have patience. Bing will show you other things that will help you with your blog and website. Thanks for coming by and I hope you enjoy the upcoming weekend.
Fabulous post Lisa! I have dabbled with both Bing and Google tools although I don’t understand a lot of it nor have the time to spend on it. I know some of the big bloggers like yourself and those who are “business” bloggers are big into their tools! That didn’t come out right, did it! Already shared this along! A lot of folks will find it very useful!
Thanks Bren, I had been working on this one and was excited about the timing. It’s pretty simple to use some of the stuff Bren but they other stuff can get complicated. It is nice to see some errors so you can make adjustments along the way. You might want to check that out. Thanks for coming by and taking time to comment. Catch you later in the social universe my friend.
Hi Lisa,
Encypted search from Google is the step to hide keywords details from webmasters, so that you won’t be able to implement right strategies to target right audience. Google only wants us to use their Adwords, I think that’s the reason many webmasters don’t like Google and start moving towards bing and yahoo.
I think you are right Aahna, they just want us to use those AdWords of theres to make money. I’m glad Bing is still available as such. Thanks for coming by and commenting.
Thank you Lisa for sharing this information, especially the detail you’ve gone into explaining the features.
It’s news to me and I will definitely take a look it. It sounds like a great feature to have the keyword search included in the tools.
I suspect that someday down the line, Bing will do the same thing as Google in protecting keywords. Then, it will be anyone’s guess.
Have a great week, what’s left of it.
Bill
You are welcome Bill. It is something you could really take a look at and see what it can offer. I hope they do not Bill, that would not be good for webmasters and SEO folks at all. You too, enjoy the rest of your week.
Absolutely! Bing webmaster tools is much different from Google webmaster tool. If a website generating huge traffic from Google search that doesn’t mean that it will also generate as much traffic from Bing & Yahoo network. I’ve written about this topic few month ago- Google keyword research tool will not be so effective for Bing and Yahoo
So, we have to work on both for a better result…
Thanks Majharul, they sure are different and offer different things to webmasters. Thanks for sharing and have a great rest of the week.