Bing announced that the rollout of the new Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) is complete. The new portal provides new SEO tools, it is mobile friendly, fast and the well designed user interface makes getting things done easy to do.
1. New SEO Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools has three new tools:
- URL Inspection
- Site Scan
- Robots.txt Tester
URL Inspection (beta)
This tool identifies guideline violations and indexing issues.
Site Scan
A technical SEO auditing tool that alerts you to common issues like missing Meta Description tags, 4XX errors, long title tags, multiple canonical tags, missing alt attributes and on page issues like the use of multiple H1 elements.
The site scan results are grouped under descending order of importance:
- Errors
- Warnings
- Notices
For example, the warning about multiple H1 elements falls under the category of Notices, which is the least critical category.
Robots.txt tester
This is a useful tool. It allows you to identify misconfigurations in the Robots.txt.
2. SEO Analyze Other Sites
Bing’s SEO tools can be used to analyze other sites, not just your own. This is a significant improvement over what Google Search Console Offers.
Related: The Top 109 Free SEO Tools You Should Be Using
Backlinks
BWT lets you backlink search and compare your site to competitors, clients, and any site you want to research.
Dedicated backlink research tools don’t have anything to fear though because the results aren’t comprehensive but the tool may show you backlinks other tools might have missed.
The Backlink tool has three options:
- All Links
Focused on your site - Similar Sites
Research other sites - Disavow
Self-explanatory
This is how Bing describes the rest of their tools:
“Keywords research allows to filter by countries, languages, and devices.
URL submission offers easy to navigate user flow with metrics and history. We have also ease URL submission via our WordPress plugin allowing to get your content indexed automatically and quickly by just installing this plugin.
SEO reports offers an improved classification of issues.
Adding and verifying a site offers a smoother experience for your site, Google Search Console or via Domain Connect.”
3. Intuitive Navigation
Better User Experience
A major problem with many search marketing related dashboards is the navigation.
It’s as if some companies bury the most important functions behind layers of ambiguously labeled navigation links.
Bing Blogs has made it simple to click around and do things.
The left hand navigational panel is split into five main sections, plus two links at the bottom (User management and a beta URL Inspection tool).
That gives clear access to 14 tools.
What makes it extra helpful is that Bing ordered the navigation according to the most popular functions.
The first group of links are labeled, Search Performance
The second group is labeled SEO:
- Backlinks
- Keyword Research
- SEO Reports
- Site Scan
Then follows Configuration:
Followed by Tools & Enhancements:
- Robots.txt Tester
Verify Bingbot
And lastly, Security & Privacy, which features a single link, Copyright Removal Notices.
Related: Making SEO & User Experience Work Together
4. Better User Interface
Bing has made their tool easy to navigate. Every tool is easy to find and is no more than one to two clicks away.
What’s most appreciated is that the navigation is clearly labeled, allowing a user to focus on doing things rather than staring at the screen trying to guess where a certain function was hidden.
Is Bing Webmaster Tools Font Big Enough?
Clicking around is easy. The one issue I have with the portal is that the fonts are set to 14 pixels. Maybe it’s me but I tend to prefer fonts at 16 pixels.
Font size 14 may be adequate but for me, it seems a bit small. But that’s just a minor quibble.
5. Overall Impressions
The attention to user experience is fantastic and the focus on SEO beyond just ones own site is a much appreciated value add.
The Bing Webmaster Tools portal is not copying Google Search Console (GSC). While there is some overlap, BWT adds many functions that an SEO needs in order to do their job.
Bing Webmaster Tools helps maintain sites controlled by the admin but goes further by adding useful SEO tools like the site scan and backlink checker.
Because the user interface makes it easy to navigate and use the portal, anyone, regardless of SEO experience, can use Bing Webmaster Tools to improve their SEO performance. Bing’s SEO and site auditing tool offers offers an easy to navigate user interface that makes accomplishing tasks easy.
Citations
Official Bing Webmaster Tools Announcement
