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Bing SEO: how to rank on Bing

Bing SEO is mostly the same work as Google SEO, plus three Bing-specific steps: verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools (you can import from Google Search Console), submit your sitemap, and use IndexNow to tell Bing about changes instantly.

Aalhad, Founder, SEO·AEO·GEO

Founder, SEO·AEO·GEO

Builds SEO·AEO·GEO and writes the crawler, schema, and citation research published here.

How Bing serves pages to crawlers

Bingbot renders JavaScript, but like Google it handles server-rendered HTML most reliably.

Why Bing matters

Bing's index powers more than bing.com: Microsoft Copilot uses Bing, Yahoo's web results come from Bing, and several other search products use Bing's results. A page that's well indexed in Bing has more places to be found.

Steps

  1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and add your site. You can import sites verified in Google Search Console.
  2. Submit your XML sitemap.
  3. Set up IndexNow so your site pings search engines when pages are added, changed or deleted. Many CMS plugins and CDNs support it.
  4. Check Bing Webmaster Tools' Site Explorer and indexing reports, and its SEO reports for issues.
  5. Make sure robots.txt and your firewall allow Bingbot.

What Bing's guidelines emphasize

  • Clear, unique, valuable content.
  • Descriptive titles and meta descriptions.
  • A crawlable site structure and sitemaps.
  • No link schemes, cloaking or keyword stuffing.
  • Check robots.txt allows the AI search crawlers you want: OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot. See the AI crawler list and the robots.txt generator.
  • Check your host's or CDN's bot protection doesn't block them even when robots.txt allows them.
  • Make sure the main text is in the HTML the server sends. AI crawlers don't run JavaScript.
  • Avoid nosnippet and tiny max-snippet values on pages you want quoted; they also keep pages out of Google's AI Overviews.

Check it on your own site

What the free audit tests for this

  • robots.txt rules
  • sitemap.xml
  • Edge access

One URL, about 20 seconds, no login. You get the result of every check and the exact fix for the top three issues.

Audit your website free

FAQ

Is Bing SEO different from Google SEO?+

The fundamentals are the same. The differences are mostly in tools (Bing Webmaster Tools, IndexNow) and in how prominent some signals are.

What is IndexNow?+

An open protocol that lets a site notify participating search engines, including Bing and Yandex, when URLs change, so they can crawl them sooner.

Sources

  1. Bing Webmaster Guidelines — Microsoft Bing
  2. Bing Webmaster Tools — Microsoft Bing
  3. IndexNow documentation — IndexNow.org