Bing & Yahoo Website Submission & Webmaster Tools

Bing and Yahoo have a combined 28% of search engine traffic. So if you want the most website visitors, then you need to get your website submitted to them. This tutorial will cover the basics of getting your site submitted and setting up Bing webmaster tools. If you missed my previous post, I talked about Google website submission & webmaster tools setup.

Bing & Yahoo Relationship

The first thing you need to know is that Yahoo is part of the Bing Network. That means that Bing provides the actual search engine for Yahoo searches. The good news is this means you only have to submit your site to Bing and deal with the Bing webmaster tools.

Bing: Submit Your Site

The easiest way to submit your website to Bing is to use their Submit your Site to Bing page.
On the page just enter the URL of your homepage (include the http://) and the captcha. As with most captchas, if you can’t read it, find a 10 year old to help you out (or use your computer’s screen zoom functions).

When you’ve successfully entered the correct captcha, you will receive a message from Bing letting you know that your site was successfully submitted. Bing will also prompt you to sign up with their webmaster tools, go ahead and click on sign up.

Bing Webmaster Tools

In order to get started with Bing Webmaster Tools you will need a microsoft account. If you already have an account, go ahead and sign in with it. Otherwise, you will need to create an account, you can use any email address to do so.

Once signed in you will have the opportunity to add a website to your account. Enter the URL including the http.

Once you have entered the URL you will be prompted to add a sitemap. It is always recommended that you add a sitemap. The sitemap for Bing must be on the same domain as the URL you have entered. This will not be an issue for most websites, however some site builders use alternate URLs.

Verify Site Ownership

Once you have added the site, you will need to verify ownership with Bing before they allow you to view metrics. There are three options to do this.

• Place an XML file on your web server (Recommended)
• Add a meta tag to your home page (Second favorite)
• Add CNAME record to DNS (last resort)

Place an XML file on your web server

This is generally the easiest option, however you do need to have FTP or other file manager access. All you do is download is a small XML file to your computer and then upload that file to your site. The file needs to be placed in the same folder location as your home page.

Add a meta tag to your home page

If you don’t have FTP access to your website (usually due to your site builder), then the meta tag is what I recommend. This does involve having access to your home page’s HTML head section. You will need to find the head section in the HTML and paste in the meta tag that Bing provides. Do not edit anything else unless you know what you are doing.

Note: Some site builders (like Google Sites) take the msvalidate.01 and remove the . making it msvalidate01. This prevents Bing from authenticating your site. The workaround is to change the . to a -. So your meta tag will have msvalidate-01 in it.

Add CNAME record to DNS

If the first two aren’t options for you, you’ll have to go with modifying your DNS. You need to select your DNS (you need to know who your registrar is) and then follow the instructions provided.

Verified Site

If site verification is successful you will see a verified message.
You can always tell if your site is verified with Bing webmaster tools by going to My Sites and looking at your website list. If you see “Site ownership has not been verified. Verify now”, then your site is not verified. Click on Verify now to try the verification again. Otherwise you should see metrics, this means you are all set up!

Conclusion

Submitting your site to Bing is as straightforward as submitting it to google (you did submit it to google already didn’t you). However, getting your site setup with Bing webmaster tools is actually a bit easier. Bing walks you through the steps quite nicely and makes it very easy to tell if your site was correctly verified.