Technical SEO for Bing: Optimizing Your Site’s Architecture and Code

Bing may not be as dominant as Google, but it powers a significant portion of searches, including those on Microsoft Edge, Cortana, and even Yahoo. To rank well on Bing, technical SEO plays a crucial role—ensuring that Bingbot can crawl, index, and understand your website efficiently.

This step-by-step guide will take you through site structure, schema markup, and coding best practices to help you optimize your website for Bing’s algorithm.

Step 1: Understand How Bingbot Crawls and Indexes Websites

Before making technical optimizations, it’s essential to understand how Bingbot, Bing’s web crawler, works.

1.1 Key Differences Between Bing and Google Crawlers

• Bing relies more on exact-match keywords than Google’s AI-driven search intent understanding.
• Bing places more emphasis on domain age and authority, so technical trust signals are critical.
• Backlinks and social signals influence rankings more on Bing compared to Google.

1.2 Check Your Site’s Crawlability with Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing provides its own Webmaster Tools (similar to Google Search Console) where you can:
✅ Submit sitemaps for faster indexing.
✅ Monitor crawl errors like 404s or blocked pages.
✅ Check robots.txt issues that may be preventing indexing.

📌 Action Step:

1. Sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Add your website and verify ownership.
3. Regularly check the “Crawl Control” section to see how Bingbot interacts with your site.

Step 2: Optimize Your Website’s Architecture for Bing

Website architecture plays a critical role in how Bingbot navigates your site. A well-structured site helps Bing understand relationships between pages and index them efficiently.

2.1 Use a Clear, Hierarchical URL Structure

Bing prefers logical and user-friendly URLs.

✅ Good URL Structure:

https://yourwebsite.com/category/subcategory/page-title

❌ Bad URL Structure:

https://yourwebsite.com/p?id=12345

📌 Action Step:

• Keep URLs short and descriptive (avoid unnecessary parameters).
• Use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in URLs (Bing treats them differently).
• Place keywords naturally in URLs but avoid keyword stuffing.

2.2 Optimize Internal Linking for Bingbot

Internal linking helps distribute PageRank and allows Bingbot to find all important pages efficiently.

📌 Action Step:

1. Link to important pages from your homepage and main category pages.
2. Use descriptive anchor text (avoid “click here” links).
3. Ensure each page is reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage.

✅ Good Internal Link Example:
“Learn more about our SEO strategies for Bing“

2.3 Ensure Fast Loading Speed

Bing ranks fast-loading websites higher because user experience is a priority.

📌 Action Step:

1. Run your website through Bing’s Page Speed Insights or GTmetrix.
2. Optimize images using compressed formats like WebP.
3. Enable browser caching and lazy loading to improve speed.
4. Use a content delivery network (CDN) to serve content faster worldwide.

🚀 Tip: Bing prioritizes mobile speed, so ensure your mobile version is fully optimized.

Step 3: Implement Schema Markup for Bing SEO

Schema markup helps Bing understand your content better by providing structured data. Unlike Google, Bing still relies heavily on metadata, so proper schema markup can improve rankings and visibility.

3.1 Choose the Right Schema for Your Content

Bing supports various structured data formats, but it prefers JSON-LD schema markup.

📌 Action Step:

• Use Schema.org markup to add structured data for:
  ✅ Articles & Blog Posts (Article schema)
  ✅ Local Businesses (LocalBusiness schema)
  ✅ Reviews (Review schema)
  ✅ FAQs (FAQPage schema)
  ✅ Events (Event schema)

✅ Example of JSON-LD Schema Markup for a Blog Post:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "How to Rank on Bing",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Your Name"
  },
  "datePublished": "2024-02-10",
  "dateModified": "2024-02-10",
  "mainEntityOfPage": {
    "@type": "WebPage",
    "@id": "https://yourwebsite.com/bing-seo-tips"
  }
}
</script>

3.2 Test and Validate Schema Markup

After adding schema, you need to validate it to ensure Bing recognizes it.

📌 Action Step:

1. Use Bing Markup Validator to test structured data.
2. Fix any warnings or errors that appear.
3. Regularly update structured data as new schema types emerge.

🚀 Tip: Adding structured data doesn’t guarantee rich results, but it improves content discoverability in Bing’s index.

Step 4: Improve Crawlability and Indexation with Robots.txt and XML Sitemaps

4.1 Configure Your Robots.txt File Properly

Your robots.txt file controls which parts of your site Bingbot can crawl.

📌 Action Step:

1. Check your current robots.txt file at yourwebsite.com/robots.txt.
2. Ensure important pages aren’t blocked from Bingbot.
3. Allow Bingbot to crawl JavaScript and CSS files:

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /
Disallow: /private/

4.2 Submit an XML Sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing relies on sitemaps to discover and index pages efficiently.

📌 Action Step:

1. Generate a sitemap using tools like Yoast SEO (WordPress) or Screaming Frog.
2. Upload the sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools > Sitemaps.
3. Keep sitemaps updated automatically to include new pages.

🚀 Tip: A well-structured sitemap helps Bing index new content faster!

Step 5: Optimize Core Web Vitals and Mobile-Friendliness

Bing considers Core Web Vitals when ranking pages, so ensuring good user experience is essential.

📌 Action Step:

1. Run a Core Web Vitals test using Google PageSpeed Insights.
2. Fix Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues.
3. Ensure text is readable on mobile devices and buttons are easy to tap.

🚀 Tip: Bing’s Mobile-Friendly Test helps check usability issues.

Final Thoughts: Mastering Technical SEO for Bing

Optimizing your site for Bing’s technical SEO requirements can significantly improve your rankings. By following these detailed steps, you’ll ensure that Bingbot can crawl, index, and rank your content effectively.

✅ Key Takeaways:

• Improve crawlability with clean URLs, robots.txt, and XML sitemaps.
• Enhance indexing with schema markup and structured data.
• Boost speed & performance with optimized images, caching, and CDNs.
• Ensure mobile-friendliness and strong Core Web Vitals for better rankings.

🚀 Start optimizing today, and dominate Bing’s search results!