I recently posted an article about how to submit URLs to Google, and that’s just dandy. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that Google is not the only search engine. You can submit URLs to Bing too!
As bloggers, we tend to obsess about Google. Any obsession isn’t healthy and for me this also applies to search engines!
Of course you want to submit all your pages to Google and you want them all indexed.
However, for most new bloggers, it’s not going to make any difference how many of their pages Google know about.
If you’re a new blogger, the harsh reality is your blog posts won’t be seen by anyone for a while. This is because Google will not rank them highly enough in its search results to begin with.
So why not think about other search engines? What about Bing?
You may think there’s no point bothering yourself about Bing and on the face of it you’d be right.
Google dominates the global search engine market… no-one even comes close. But that doesn’t mean other search engines aren’t worth thinking about… especially if you’re a new blogger.
Search Engine Worldwide Market Share
Clearly Google has the most market share globally (overwhelmingly so!), with Bing taking the second spot.
Yes, Bing generates less searches… but it’s a very different search engine to Google.
It has its own algorithms that work slightly differently. The emphasis is still on quality and links, but it’s not as difficult to rank as it is in Google… in my opinion!
The point is, you don’t need to spend all your time worrying just about Google. This is especially true if you’re a new blogger!
Bing Webmaster Tools
Google has the Search Console, Bing has Bing Webmaster Tools. If you don’t have a Webmaster Tools account, you’ll need to register for one. Without an account you won’t be able to submit URLs to Bing.
Sign up for a Bing Webmaster Tools account.
When you’ve created your Bing Webmaster Tools account, added and verified your domain, you’ll be able to use Bing’s Submit URLs tool.
Here’s how you do it!
Submitting URLs to Bing
You can access the submit URLs tool from the main dashboard by clicking your verified domain. This takes you to your dashboard.
On the left-hand side of your domain dashboard you’ll see this menu:
The tool to submit URLs to Bing is located under the Configure My Site link.
When you click this link, it will reveal the following options:
The one you’re interested in is, you guessed it… submit URLs! Click this and you’ll see the submit tool on the following page:
You just need to add your URLs (1 per line) and click submit. At this point Bing will queue them for evaluation and add them to its index.
In my experience, URLs are indexed pretty quickly. Having said this, SideGains has been a verified domain for a good while now.
And this brings me neatly onto another subject: submission limits.
Bing URL Submission Limits
The thing I love about the Bing’s submission function is you can bulk submit URLs… and lots of them too!
I should caveat this though. You have to jump through a few time hoops relating to your “site verified age” before you can submit vast numbers of URLs.
Did you notice this in the submit URLs screen shot above?
There is a daily submission quota that changes depending upon when your domain was verified in the Webmaster Tools system. These quotas relate to site verified age like this:
Because SideGains was verified over 180 days ago, I’m allowed to submit up to 10,000 URLs to Bing each day.
Of course this is way more than I’ll likely ever need!
To be honest, this limitation won’t be a huge problem for you if you’re a new blogger without much content. Once your domain is verified, you’ll likely be able to submit all your URLs within a few days.
It’s pretty simple really!
Summary
- As a new blogger Bing can be a great place to start gaining organic traffic.
- You can submit URLs to Bing, but your domain must be verified in Bing Webmaster Tools.
- After 180 days of being verified, Bing’s submit URLs tool enables you to send up to 10,000 URLs per day from your domain to it’s crawl queue.
That’s all for this post!
Paul
Drop me a comment below if you need any help setting up Bing Webmaster Tools or verifying your domain.
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