By Shawna Arnold
Recently, we discussed the importance of Google Webmaster Tools for your insurance website. This week, we’re going to get into Bing Webmaster Tools, and why you should be implementing this tool as well.
Bing Webmaster Tools 101
Similar to Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools is a free platform that allows you to submit your website and view its technical data. Bing Webmaster Tools presents you with the following information:
- Clicks to your website from search
- Appearance of your website in search results
- Crawl status of pages
- Crawl errors
- Index status of pages
- Top keywords for your website in organic search
- Top pages for organic search traffic
- Incoming links to your website
Bing Webmaster Tools also allows you to submit your sitemap, review its crawl status, and find / fix your website’s crawl errors. Bing’s tool will detail out any “SEO suggestions” they see for your website as well, such as adjusting page title tags and meta descriptions.
Why Bother With Bing?
We know what you’re thinking. Google holds 67% of the market share for Search engines, so why put much effort into complying with Bing’s best practices? Bing’s share has been slowly growing over time. With almost 19% of the market, it’s hard to deny that they’re a contender in the search “game.” You don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket. In this case, you don’t want to rely solely on Google’s data to know how your site performs in search overall. Despite Google have the largest share of the search market, they are increasingly taking information away from website owners, while Bing is not.
While your inbound marketing strategy may have been formed with Google specifically in mind, what is best practice for Google should translate to all search engines. Your website should provide high quality, unique, and engaging content that adequately explains both who your agency is and what insurance products you provide. Your website should also be relevant to search users. If your site meets these criteria, then you’re on the right track, no matter the search engine.
Bing Webmaster Tools not only indicates how your website is performing and its technical status in Bing search, but also in Yahoo search. Yahoo and Bing merged their search algorithms back in 2011; you now only need to use one set of tools between the two search engines to track your website. By using both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, you’re able to monitor the technical and search performance of your website on all three major search engines.
In learning the technical status of your website and how / why visitors came to your website, you’ll be equipped to make any strategy adjustments necessary to ensure you’re catering well to every search engine’s user base.
Have questions about Bing Webmaster Tools or stories about how it benefited your strategy? Leave a comment so we can discuss.
About The Author
Shawna Arnold is the Inbound Marketing Manager at Astonish, specializing in SEO and content marketing. She has been with Astonish for five years, allowing her to work closely with a variety of insurance agencies all over the country. She has a passion for SEO, content, social media, and all things inbound marketing. She thrives on educating small businesses and individuals on inbound marketing through blogging, eBooks, white papers, and more.
