| 🎯 What’s the goal? To enable Bing Webmaster Tools for your website. | ⚠️ Why does it matter? Bing Webmaster Tools will allow you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in the Bing search engine. It will help you understand and improve how Bing sees your site. |
| 🏁 What’s the result? Bing Webmaster Tools enabled and ownership of your website is verified. | ⌚ When do you do this? As soon as possible once you launch your website. But you will need to do it every time you create a subdomain, or add a new protocol (e.g. migrate from http:// to https://). |
| ✅ Any special requirements? Ideally, you need to have Google Search Console or Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin enabled for your site. But if you haven’t, we’ll also cover the manual verification methods in this guide. | 🙋♂️Who should do it? The owner of the website or the person in charge of analytics. |
👉 Where this is done: In the Bing Webmaster Tools website.
⏳ How long will this take? about 25 minutes
Let’s get started, in 25-min you’ll start to get SEO recommendations from Bing Webmaster Tools and receive future alerts from them.
Environment setup:
- We recommend that you use the Google Chrome browser to navigate the web.
- Administrator access to your website,
- A Google Account (Gmail, G-Suite).
#1 – Enabling Bing Webmaster Tools with Google Search Console
- Go to the Bing Webmaster Tools website.
- Click on “Sign In”.
- Choose to sign in with your Google Account.
- If you use more than one Google account, choose the desired one (associated with Google Search Console) from the list.
- Choose “Import” underneath “Google Search Console” verification method.
- Then press “Continue”.
- Allow bing.com to access your Google Account by clicking on “Allow”.
- Choose which site’s data you want to import.
- Press on “Import”.
- Now your website’s data is connected to Bing Webmaster Tools.
And that’s it. Bing Webmaster Tools are properly enabled for your website. Importing data from Google Search Console is the fastest way to do it. In case you don’t use GSC proceed to the next part of this SOP
#2 – Enabling Bing Webmaster Tools with manual verification
- Go to the Bing Webmaster Tools website.
- Click on “Sign In”.
- Choose to sign in with your Google Account.
- If you use more than one Google account, choose the desired one from the list.
- Choose to “Add your site manually. Enter your site URL.
- Then click on “Add”..
- “Add & verify site” window will appear.
Verifying your site with XML file
Verification Requirements: You need to have FTP access to your server. This is an advanced verification method for system administrator/webmaster. You can easily verify your site using other methods.
- Download provided “XML” file.
- Upload the downloaded file to the root folder of your site and click on “Verify”.
Verifying your site with HTML Meta Tag
- Copy provided “<meta> tag”.
Open a new tab in your browser
- Log in to your WordPress Admin Panel (yourdomainname.com/wp-admin).
- On the left-side menu choose “Appearance”.
- Then click on “Theme Editor”.
- From the list on the right side choose “Theme Header”.
- Then paste (Ctrl + V) meta tag just below the “<head>” line.
- Click on “Update File”.
- Now go back to Bing Webmaster Tools and click on “Verify”.
#3 – Enabling Bing Webmaster Tools with Yoast WordPress Plugin
Verification Requirements: You need Yoast SEO Plugin installed on your website. Check our post “Install Yoast SEO plug-in on your WordPress website”.
- Copy only “verification code” from provided HTML Meta Tag (blacked out part).
Open a new tab in your browser
- Go to your WordPress Admin panel (eg: “yourwebdomain.com/wp-admin”),
- Log in to your WordPress Admin Panel:
- On the left-side menu click on “SEO”.
- Then choose “General”.
- Choose the “Webmaster Tools” tab.
- All you have to do is paste the “Bing verification code” into the highlighted box and click on “Save changes”.
- Go back to Bing Webmaster Tools and click on “Verify”.
#4 – Enabling Bing Webmaster Tools with CNAME Records (DNS)
Verification Requirements: You need to have DNS set for your website. In this SOP we will add a CNAME record using Cloudflare DNS. Check our SOP-028 and SOP-029 no how to configure Cloudflare.
- Copy highlighted part, it will be the name of the record we will create.
Open a new tab in your browser
- Go to cloudflare.com.
- Click on “Log in”.
- Enter your credentials and press “Log in”.
- Select the domain name you want to verify.
- Click on “DNS” in the upper section of the screen.
- Click on “Add record”.
- Choose “Type” to “CNAME”.
- Paste a copied name in the “Name” box and enter “verify.bing.com” in the “Target” box.
- Click on “Save”.
- Go back to Bing WEbmaster Tools and click on ”Verify”.
After successful verification, Bing Webmaster Tools will be ready to go
Note that sometimes you have to wait up to 48 hours for changes in DNS record to apply so don’t be alarmed if you can’t verify immediately
Bing Webmaster Tools is now enabled for your website and your site is properly verified. Choose the verification method that suits you the most
Your Data should appear in the Bing Webmaster Tools after a couple of days.
