How to use Bing Webmaster Tools to improve your SEO
Bing Webmaster Tools is a free suite of tools and reports that can help you improve your website’s performance in Bing search results. It provides insights into your website’s traffic, indexation status, and technical SEO issues. You can also use Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap, disavow bad links, and get personalized recommendations for improving your search engine visibility.
Getting started with Bing Webmaster Tools
To get started with Bing Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to create an account and verify your website ownership. Once you’re verified, you can start using the tools and reports to improve your website’s SEO.
Verifying your website
There are three ways to verify your website ownership in Bing Webmaster Tools:
- XML file authentication: This is the recommended method for verifying your website ownership. To use XML file authentication, you’ll need to create a Bing Webmaster Tools XML file and upload it to your website’s root directory.
- Meta tag authentication: This method involves adding a meta tag to your website’s homepage.
- CNAME record authentication: This method involves adding a CNAME record to your DNS settings.
Submitting a sitemap
A sitemap is a file that lists all of the pages on your website. Submitting a sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools helps Bing discover and index your website’s pages more quickly.
To submit a sitemap, go to the Sitemaps section of Bing Webmaster Tools and click Add a Sitemap. Enter the URL of your sitemap and click Submit.
Using the SEO Analyzer
The SEO Analyzer is a tool in Bing Webmaster Tools that scans your website for common SEO issues. It provides a report of any issues found, along with recommendations for how to fix them.
To use the SEO Analyzer, go to the SEO Reports section of Bing Webmaster Tools and click Run Report.
Tracking your website’s performance
Bing Webmaster Tools provides a variety of reports that can help you track your website’s performance in Bing search results. These reports include:
- Search Analytics: This report shows you how often your website appears in Bing search results and how many clicks it receives.
- Keyword Research: This report shows you which keywords are driving traffic to your website from Bing search.
- Site Scan: This report shows you any technical SEO issues found on your website, such as broken links and duplicate content.
Fixing SEO errors
Once you’ve used the SEO Analyzer to identify any SEO issues on your website, you can fix them using the following tips:
- Broken links: Fix broken links by redirecting them to the correct pages.
- Duplicate content: Remove duplicate content from your website or use canonical tags to tell Bing which version of the content is the original.
- Meta tags: Make sure your meta tags are unique and relevant to each page on your website.
- Title tags: Make sure your title tags are unique and relevant to each page on your website and that they accurately describe the content of the page.
- Image alt text: Add alt text to all of your images to help Bing understand what they are.
Using Bing Webmaster Tools to improve your search engine visibility
Bing Webmaster Tools provides a number of features that can help you improve your search engine visibility. These features include:
- Disavow tool: The disavow tool allows you to tell Bing to ignore certain links to your website. This can be helpful if you have links from low-quality sites.
- Fetch as Bing: The Fetch as Bing tool allows you to see how Bing sees your website. This can help you identify any SEO issues that may be preventing your pages from being indexed.
- Robot.txt generator: The robot.txt generator allows you to create a robot.txt file for your website. This file tells Bing which pages on your website to crawl and which pages not to crawl.
By using Bing Webmaster Tools, you can improve your website’s technical SEO, track your performance in Bing search results, and fix any SEO issues that may be preventing your pages from ranking well.
