Tag Archive for: Bing Webmaster Guidelines

Bing has officially completed the launch of its new Bing Webmaster Tools, which streamlines the old tool suite while offering a number of new features. 

According to the announcement, the process managed to condense the old version’s 47 unique links to just 17 different links without losing any of the functionality previously available. This was done by bundling redundant or related functions into more powerful tools.

At the same time, Bing announced it had introduced a new URL inspection tool, a Robots.txt testing feature, a site scan tool, and revamped webmaster guidelines. 

Choose Your Bing Webmaster Tools

For now, webmasters can choose to use the new or old version of Bing Webmaster Tools. The old suite is available at https://www.bing.com/webmaster/. The new version can be found at https://www.bing.com/webmasters/

However, the old version won’t be sticking around for too long. The announcement says it will be disabled sometime next month. 

Enhanced Tools

While streamlining the platform, Bing expanded the functionality of several tools. These updates include:

  • Backlinks lists backlinks for any site, including similar websites.
  • Keyword Research lets you filter data by countries, languages, and devices. 
  • URL Submission is better streamlined for easier navigation. This includes simplifying URL submission via the Bing WordPress plugin for faster indexing. 
  • SEO Reports provides improved classification of errors or issues. 

New Tools

Along with the consolidated and enhanced tools from the old version of Bing Webmaster Tools, the company revealed several new tools. These include:

  • URL Inspection: A beta feature that allows Bing to inspect crawled versions of your site for potential indexing issues.
  • Site Scan: A site audit tool that crawls and checks your site for common SEO issues which may affect your search ranking. 
  • Robots.txt Tester: Check your robots.txt file using the same inspection tools Bing uses to verify your URLs.

bing-2Google isn’t the only search engine waging a war on black hat or manipulative SEO. Every major search engine has been adapting their services to fight against those trying to cheat their way to the top of the rankings. This week, Bing made their latest move against devious optimizers by amending their Webmaster Guidelines to include a stern warning against using keyword stuffing to try to rank highly.

The warning cuts the cheating SEOs no slack, cautioning that Bing may demote or entirely delist sites caught using keyword stuffing. The change wasn’t officially announced, but Barry Schwartz says it appeared in the guidelines sometimes yesterday.

The new section on keyword stuffing reads:

When creating content, make sure to create your content for real users and readers, not to entice search engines to rank your content better. Stuffing your content with specific keywords with the sole intent of artificially inflating the probability of ranking for specific search terms is in violation of our guidelines and can lead to demotion or even the delisting of your website from our search results.

Bing published their first set of webmaster guidelines in the Help section of Bing’s Webmaster Tools to offer guidance on the best SEO practices for their search engine.

While not nearly as detailed as Google’s webmaster guidelines, hat is seemingly on purpose. According to Matt McGee at Search Engine Land, Bing aims these guidelines at “business owners” to help them “understand the broad strokes of search marketing.”

For more detailed information, look into Bing’s Webmaster FAQ’s.