How to Rank on Bing in 2026: A 10-Step Guide

The short answer

Ranking on Bing comes down to four things. Bing must know your pages exist. Your titles must use the words people search. Your pages must be complete and credible. And Bing must see that other sites and people vouch for you.

Most sites fail at the first step. They never verify in Bing Webmaster Tools, never submit a sitemap, and wait for Bingbot to find them. Bing does crawl the open web, but it prioritises sites that tell it what to crawl. Fix that first and the rest follows.

The ten steps below run in order of impact. Steps 1 to 4 take one afternoon and remove the barriers. Steps 5 to 9 improve the pages. Step 10 tells you whether it worked.

Why Bing rankings are worth the work

Bing holds 4.47 percent of searches worldwide and 8.84 percent on desktop, according to StatCounter for July 2026. Those numbers understate its reach. Bing's index feeds Yahoo Search, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Microsoft Copilot answers from Bing's index. ChatGPT Search launched on Bing's index and still uses it as a primary source.

Edge and Windows ship with Bing as the default. Many office workers never change it. So Bing searchers skew toward desktop, business hours and buying intent.

The competition is thinner too. Most SEO teams tune every page for Google and never look at Bing. The same effort moves you further up a Bing results page. Our comparison of Bing SEO and Google SEO explains the nine signals that differ. This guide turns them into steps.

Step 1: Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's free console for site owners. Nothing else on this list works well until you are in it. Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account.

The fastest route is to import from Google Search Console. Bing reads your verified properties there and adds them in one click. If you prefer to verify directly, Bing accepts an XML file upload, a meta tag on your homepage, or a DNS record. All three work the same way as Google's methods.

What it changes: Bing now treats your site as claimed. You get crawl data, index status, keyword data and the reports the later steps depend on.

Step 2: Submit your XML sitemap

In Bing Webmaster Tools, open Sitemaps and paste the URL of your sitemap. Bing reads it on a schedule and treats it as your list of pages worth crawling. Keep it clean. Include only live pages that return 200 and that you want indexed. Remove redirected URLs, deleted pages and thin tag archives.

Bing recommends refreshing the sitemap at least once a day if you publish often. Most CMS platforms do this automatically. Check the sitemap URL in a browser after any migration or plugin change, because a broken sitemap is the most common reason Bing stops finding new pages.

What it changes: Bing has a map of your site instead of guessing from links. New pages get found on the next sitemap read rather than the next deep crawl.

Step 3: Turn on IndexNow

IndexNow is an open protocol Bing built. When you publish, update or delete a page, your site sends the URL to Bing at once. Bing typically crawls it within a day. Yandex, Naver and Seznam accept the same ping. Google does not.

You do not need to write code. Yoast and Rank Math on WordPress support IndexNow with a single setting. Shopify, Wix and other platforms have apps or built-in support. If your platform has neither, Bing Webmaster Tools also accepts up to 10,000 manual URL submissions per day for most sites.

Bing has said that IndexNow gives Copilot the freshness signals it needs to ground answers in current content. So this step feeds both search and AI answers.

What it changes: a new page can rank on Bing the day after you publish it, rather than weeks later.

Step 4: Run Site Scan and fix what it flags

Bing Webmaster Tools includes Site Scan, a crawler that checks your pages for technical and on-page problems. It reports missing titles, duplicate titles, missing descriptions, thin pages, broken links, slow pages and blocked resources. Each issue is ranked by severity.

Work from the top of the list. Fix errors before warnings. Broken internal links and duplicate titles are the usual first hits on sites that have grown for a few years. Our SEO and AEO Audit runs a similar check across 25 pages free and orders the fixes by impact, so you can compare the two lists.

What it changes: Bingbot spends its crawl on pages that work, and pages that lost points on technical faults get them back.

Step 5: Match your titles and headings to the search words

Bing reads titles and headings more literally than Google. Bing's webmaster guidelines say Bing uses the words in your title and H1 to understand the page. Related phrasing helps less than the exact phrase.

For each page you want to rank, pick one target phrase. Put it in the title tag, in the H1 and once in the first 100 words. Write the meta description as a plain promise of what the page delivers, with the phrase in it once. Keep titles under 60 characters so they show in full.

Do not repeat the phrase beyond that. Bing's guidelines list keyword stuffing as a reason to lose rankings. One clear use in each place is the goal.

What it changes: Bing can match your page to the query without inference. This is the single biggest on-page lever on Bing.

Step 6: Make each page complete and credible

Bing's guidelines group several factors under quality and credibility: author reputation, site reputation, transparency of authorship, completeness of content and level of discourse. Bing's Fabrice Canel has described the goal as knowing whether a site is an authority for a specific topic.

In practice, that means four things on the page. A named author with a short bio. A visible publish or update date. A complete answer that does not send the reader elsewhere for the basics. And a tone that informs rather than argues. Bing has said that pages built on negativity or one-sided attacks rank lower.

Freshness is a separate factor in Bing's list. Update pages that carry dates, prices or version numbers, and show the update date. Bing reads it.

What it changes: Bing scores the page as complete and trustworthy, which decides ties between pages that match the same words.

Step 7: Earn a few links from relevant, established sites

Bing counts backlinks, but weighs quality and relevance more than volume. Bing's guidelines say Bing wants links to grow organically and reduces the value of bought links and link farms. Industry testing shows Bing rewards links from older, topic-relevant domains more than Google does.

So the target is narrow. One link from an industry association, a trade publication, a university or a long-running blog in your field does more than ten directory listings. Ask suppliers, partners and clients who already know you. Publish something worth citing, such as original data or a clear reference page.

Check your own inbound links while you are at it. A backlink to a page that now returns 404 passes nothing. Redirect it to the closest live page. Our guide on broken links and SEO explains which ones to fix first.

What it changes: Bing sees your site as an authority in its topic, which lifts every page on the domain.

Step 8: Share your pages where people engage

Bing's guidelines have stated since 2012 that social media plays a role in ranking. Content that gets shared widely sends Bing a positive signal. Google does not use this signal. So this step is Bing-specific.

Share each important page from the accounts that get real replies and shares. Personal author profiles on LinkedIn usually draw more engagement than company pages. Post once, well, rather than five times, badly. Verify your social profile URLs in Bing Webmaster Tools under My Brand so Bing connects the accounts to your site.

Do not buy followers or shares. Bing's guidelines list like schemes beside link schemes as a reason to lose rankings.

What it changes: Bing sees people vouch for your content, which the guidelines describe as influence.

Step 9: Add relevant images with real alt text

Bing indexes images and video directly and reads the alt attribute and surrounding text to understand them. The guidelines ask for descriptive alt text and encourage rich media with proper markup. Pages with a relevant image or diagram tend to outperform text-only pages on Bing.

Add one image that helps the reader on each page you want to rank. A diagram, a screenshot or a product photo works. Write alt text that describes it in plain words. Skip decorative stock photos, or give them an empty alt attribute so they do not add noise.

What it changes: your page qualifies for Bing image results and scores higher in the main results for completeness.

Step 10: Track your Bing positions weekly

Bing rankings move on their own schedule. Changes from steps 1 to 4 tend to show within one to two weeks. Content and link changes take four to eight weeks. Without a baseline, you cannot tell what worked.

Pick 10 to 20 keywords that matter to your business. Check them on Bing from the country you sell in, and note the position and ranking URL. Repeat weekly. The guide on checking your Bing ranking covers the four ways to do it and the mistakes that skew the numbers. When a keyword moves, match the date to the change you made.

The Bing rank tracker does this for you. It checks every keyword weekly, stores the full history, and shows up to five competitors beside you. 10 keywords are free. Bing Webmaster Tools also reports impressions and clicks per query under Search Performance, which tells you which keywords to add to the tracker.

What it changes: you stop guessing. Every step above gets a date and a result.

Bonus: check what Copilot cites

Since February 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools includes an AI Performance report. It shows how often Copilot and Bing's AI summaries cite your pages, which pages they cite, and the grounding queries behind each citation. Microsoft expanded it in June 2026 with citation share, intent labels and topic groupings.

Open it after step 1 and check it monthly. Pages that Copilot cites are the pages to protect. Keep their URLs stable, keep them current, and never let them return 404. Bing's report covers Microsoft's surfaces only. Our AI Visibility Monitor adds ChatGPT and Claude so you see the whole picture.

If you serve a local area: claim Bing Places

Bing Places for Business is Bing's equivalent of a Google Business Profile. Claim your listing at bingplaces.com or import it from your Google profile. Fill in every field: hours, categories, photos and a description that uses the words customers search.

Bing's guidelines list location as a ranking consideration. A complete Bing Places listing puts you in the local pack and the map results for searches in your area. Keep the name, address and phone number identical to your website and your Google listing.

What Bing tells you to avoid

Bing's guidelines name the practices that cost rankings or get a site removed. The list is short and clear.

• Cloaking: showing Bingbot different content than visitors see.
• Link schemes: buying links, link farms and reciprocal link networks.
• Like schemes: buying followers, shares or engagement.
• Meta refresh redirects: use a server-side 301 instead.
• Duplicate content: the same page at several URLs, or copied from other sites.
• Keyword stuffing and hidden text: one clear use of the phrase, visible to everyone.

If you have done any of these, remove the pattern first. Then request a re-evaluation through Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing reverses actions when the cause is gone.

How long it takes

These are typical ranges from our own tracking and from industry reports. Your site's size, age and competition shift them. The tracker in step 10 gives you your own numbers.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get my website on Bing?

Verify it in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your XML sitemap and turn on IndexNow. Bing will crawl and index your pages within days. You can also submit up to 10,000 URLs a day by hand for most sites.

How long does it take to rank on Bing?

Indexing takes hours to days with IndexNow. Technical and title fixes show in one to two weeks. Content and link improvements take four to eight weeks. New sites take longer, because Bing gives older domains more trust.

Is it easier to rank on Bing than on Google?

Often, yes. Fewer sites tune their pages for Bing, and Bing publishes its ranking considerations. The same work moves you further. Bing is still smaller, so weigh the effort against the traffic.

Does Bing use meta keywords?

Bing has said the meta keywords tag can be a weak signal, and that stuffing it is a spam signal. Do not spend time on it. Titles, headings and body text matter far more.

Do I need to do anything different for Copilot?

No. Copilot answers from Bing's index. Pages that rank well on Bing and stay current are the pages Copilot cites. The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows which ones.

How do I check my Bing ranking?

Search Bing from the country you sell in, in a private window, and count. Or use the free check on our Bing rank tracker page, which returns your position in seconds and tracks 10 keywords weekly at no cost.