Just like Google, Bing also offers webmaster tools for webmasters to analyze and improve their site’s performance on search engine. Keep in mind that Google isn’t the only search engine out there. If you’re serious about SEO, it is essential that your site/blog is added to all of the major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo search). Submitting your blog to Bing will cover both Bing and Yahoo. This means if you submit your site to bing webmaster tools, you can get indexed in both Bing and Yahoo search engines.
See also: How to Submit and Verify your WordPress Blog in Google Webmaster tools
However, submitting your blog to search engines doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be on the first page of search results, but at least your blog will be added and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine crawler.
Why use Bing webmaster tools?
Once your Website is verified in Bing Webmaster Tools, you can:
- Learn if your site has been indexed and is getting traffic from Bing.
- Discover potential issues with your websites such as File Not Found (404) errors, blocked by REP, long dynamic URLs, and unsupported content-types.
- Troubleshoot the crawling and indexing errors of your site.
- See backlinks, inbound links, and keyword performance for your site.
- See a complete statistics on your site’s activities within Bing.
- Submit a Sitemap of your site.
- and more…
Steps to Add/Submit and Verify your WordPress Site in Bing Webmaster tools
Adding and verifying your WordPress blog in Bing Webmaster Tools is easy and is very similar to Google Webmaster Tools. You can do it in less than 10 minutes by going through these steps.
Step 1: Log in to Bing webmaster tools with your Windows Live account. (If you don’t have an account, create one. You can also use your favorite email address as your microsoft account to sign in to Bing webmaster tools.)
Step 2: Enter the URL of your site and click Add.
Step 3: Fill out the basic information and click Save.
If you already have created a sitemap for your site, you can add it in the Add a sitemap text box by entering the full URL of the sitemap (yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml). If you haven’t created a sitemap yet, please see my article on How to Create and submit an XML Sitemap for Your WordPress Site. Note that you can always add a sitemap later.
Step 4: Now you will be taken to a page that shows three options for verifying your blog with Bing. Choose the Option 2 which involves adding a small line of meta tag code to your website. Copy the meta tag which looks something like this:
Now you need to paste this code in the header section of your blog. Leave this verification page open.
Step 5: Open a new tab/window and go to your WordPress dashboard.
Step 6: If you are using SEO Plugins like WordPress SEO by yoast or All in one SEO, you can easily add your meta tag in its settings.
If you are using WordPress SEO yoast plugin, follow these steps:
- Go to SEO » Dashboard » scroll down to Webmaster Tools section and paste the
Meta tagin the Bing Webmaster Tools field. (You need to add full line of meta tag into the field – see screenshot below.)
If you are using All in one SEO plugin, follow these steps:
- Go to All in One SEO » General settings » scroll down to Webmaster Verification section and paste the
Meta tagcode in the Google Webmaster Tools field (Not full meta tag, just the content code – see screenshot below.)
Otherwise you will need to install ‘Insert headers and footers‘ plugin to insert the meta tag in header section of your site. For this go to Settings » Insert Headers and Footers and paste the full line of meta tag into the header box. Save the settings.
Step 7: Clean your site’s cache if you are using any Cache plugin on your site.
Step 8: Go back to Bing webmaster tools page that you left open on another tab and click on Verify button.
That’s it! Your site is now successfully verified in Bing webmaster tools. Once your site is verified, Bing will come and visit your site soon to gather data about your site. It can take up to three days or more for data to begin showing on newly added sites. Once your data starts showing up, you can use it to control how Bing crawls and indexes your site.
Note: To stay verified, don’t remove the meta tag even after verification succeeds.
If you have any doubts in above steps, feel free to leave a comment. I will be more happy to help. Happy Blogging!