Submitting sitemaps to search engines is important because it helps get your site indexed. Once your site is indexed then the search engine will start showing your posts in search results. In this post, I am going to show you how to add a sitemap to Bing Webmaster.
Google is the biggest search engine out there, but Bing also gets millions of search requests daily, so shouldn’t be ignored.
Let’s do this step by step.
- Bing Webmaster dashboard
- How to submit a sitemap to Bing
- How to submit a new post to Bing
- Video tutorial on submitting your sitemap to Bing
- Frequently asked questions
- Conclusion
Bing Webmaster dashboard
After you sign in to your Bing Webmaster account, you come to your ‘My Sites’ list. Select the site you want to submit a sitemap for. Once you select your site, you come to your site dashboard.
Like this.
How to submit a sitemap to Bing
Halfway down your dashboard, you can see the section ‘Sitemaps’. Should you be on another page, look for ‘Configure My Site’ on the side menu. In the drop-down menu there is a sitemap option, select that.
To submit the sitemap, you copy the URL of your sitemap on your site, come back to this page and click on the ‘Submit a Sitemap’ link.
After we click on the link, a box appears for us to paste our URL.
Like this.
Paste the URL of your sitemap into this box and click on the ‘Submit’ link.
If you are not sure how to find your sitemap URL, check out my other post, ‘How to find your sitemap‘. I show you how to find your sitemap when using the Yoast SEO plugin.
Once you have submitted your sitemap to Bing, your ‘Sitemaps’ section will update to reflect the change.
Like this.
Your sitemap URL is listed, to the right of that, you can see the date the sitemap was submitted, the number of URL’s in the sitemap, the date Bing crawled the map, and if there is an error with the submitted sitemap.
I have refreshed the page and my ‘Pending’ messages have updated.
As you can see from the screenshot, Bing crawled my sitemap on the same day I submitted it, and there are no errors with this sitemap.
That is how you submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster. You only submit your sitemap to Bing once, their system will send a ‘Bot’ to crawl your site automatically.
If you publish posts to your blog frequently, then Bing will crawl your site more often.
How to submit a new post to Bing
To get your new or updated posts indexed quickly, you can submit the URL to Bing. Once Bing accepts your URL, they will send one of their ‘bots’ to crawl the post.
Bing will see your new or updated posts from your sitemap, but by submitting your new URL, you get Bing to come early.
Let’s go back to your site dashboard in Bing Webmasters. On the left, look for ‘Configure my site’, from the drop-down menu, select ‘Submit URLs’.
Like this.
Once you select ‘Submit URLs’, you come to this page.
After you have published your new or updated post, open the post in a browser tab and copy the URL. Come back to this page, and paste the URL into the box and click on the green ‘Submit’ link.
Like this.
Once you have submitted your URL to Bing, the URL will appear in the list at the bottom of the page.
To check if your post has been indexed on Bing, go to Bing.com and put your blog title in speech marks, in the search box. If your site has been indexed, it will appear in the search results.
I submitted this URL and waited a few minutes before doing the index check. Therefore, Bing indexes new posts quickly.
That is how to add a sitemap and new posts to Bing Webmaster.
Video tutorial on submitting your sitemap to Bing
Frequently asked questions
In the Bing Webmaster dashboard, there is a configure my site option in the left-hand side menu. That opens up to show more options, one of which is sitemaps. Select the sitemaps option and submit your website’s site map.
First, you need to open a Bing Webmaster account. Then you have to verify your site. Once your site is verified, you can submit your sitemap to Bing to let them know you have a site they need to index. I would also recommend submitting your blog post URL’s after you publish them, to speed up the indexing process.
To verify your site, I recommend using the HTML file option. Download the HTML from your Bing webmaster account to your computer. Then, upload it to the root directory of your website through your hosting Cpanel or by using an FTP client.
Sitemaps speed up the indexing process. The quicker you get your site indexed by Google and Bing, the quicker your site will appear in search results.
Each time I publish a new post, I submit the URL to Bing for indexing. I have found that my new post is indexed within minutes.
I recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. Once installed, it generates a sitemap for your site automatically. Each time you publish a new post or update an old one, Yoast will update the sitemap. Yoast SEO is free to install and use.
Conclusion
Google is the market leader in search engines, but Bing still gets a lot of searches per day.
If you haven’t set up an account with Bing Webmasters yet, I suggest you do that next. You can sign up for an account at Bing Webmaster tools.
It takes a few clicks to get your sitemap submitted to Bing. Once you submit your map, your blog will be indexed. Submit your sitemap once, Bing will crawl your map frequently.
If your site is new, then submit your new posts via the ‘Submit URLs’ option. That will get Bing to crawl your site.
If you have any questions about this post, please leave them in the comments box below. I check for comments every day.
For more video tutorials, please check out my YouTube channel. I publish new videos every week.
Comments
Are you submitting your sitemap to Bing?
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I look forward to reading your comments.
