How to add website sitemaps to Bing webmaster Tools?
While checking your website stats have you noticed that most your visitors are coming from Google search only and non from other major search engines. It makes sure that your website is not performing very well on except Google search so let’s collect some more visitors from other largest search engines like Bing, Yahoo.
Note: Search engine results at Yahoo are powered by Bing. So, once Bing indexed your website, it will appear in the search results at Yahoo as well.
If you want to index your website to Bing then you need to add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools and provide a sitemap because Bing has their own set of Webmaster Tools.
How to add website to Bing Webmaster Tools?
Login to the Bing Webmaster Tools and you will see the button “sign in to use webmaster tools” click the button. You will be redirected to Windows Live Login page and sign in with your Windows Live Id or if you don’t have then you must sign up there.
Click on “Add site” button.
Pop ups window will open there you have to enter your website URL example http://www.xploringminds.com
Click on “Submit” button.
Again you will get pop ups window there you need to verify your ownership by placing XML file on your web server or copy and paste tag in your default webpage. I will prefer to choose first method because it will not affects your website loading time and less chance of mistake.
Download the XML file and upload it in the main directory of your website (usually “public_html”) using or your online file manager or FTP software. If you don’t have FTP software then download it from here.
If you are done the above steps then click on “Verify” button. Bing Webmaster Tools verifies your ownership and you will be redirected to the “Dashboard” page.
Click on “Crawl” button at the top of the page.
Click on “Sitemaps” link on the left side of the page.
Click the “Add sitemaps” button. Enter the URL of your website example http://www.xploringminds.com/sitemaps.xml in the box and click on “Submit”. If you don’t have sitemap created then go to your Dashboard >Plugin> Add New and search for “Google XML sitemap” and install it.
Bing Webmaster Tools will download your website sitemap and it will take up to 3 days to crawl your website.
If you are already using Bing Webmaster Tools then please share your experience through comment box because your experience can make someone perfect.
Hey! did you forget Yahoo
Well, if you have WordPress blog and can afford a few more plugins, why not to install something like all-in-one-webmaster. It lets you register and verify to Google, yahoo & Bing search engines. It will create and submit the sitemap to each of these engines too!
But your tutorial works for any websites where plugins can help only for WordPress blogs.
@Suresh
I didn’t forget
As i mentioned above in note “Note: Search engine results at Yahoo are powered by Bing. So, once Bing indexed your website, it will appear in the search results at Yahoo as well.”
that’s why i think its not necessary.
Your suggestion will help many of webmasters.
Thanks for your comment.
I just added my website to bing webmaster tools. So far I am still not able to search for my blog. I understand it may take time. I have been researching about optimizing my blog without infringement of google TOS and policies. Can you enlighten me if everything is ok since I have been reading over and over the TOS but I don’t see anywhere that I am not allowed to index my blog with another search engine.
Thanks. I’m trying to get my site better ranked by search engines and this has helped a lot.
Very useful article. My visitor number from Yahoo and Bing is indeed small. Let’s see how effective are the techniques described here.