Microsoft’s search engine Bing has announced a fresh update to their webmaster tools which will help provide new perspectives about the traffic that flows into the websites. If you do not know yet then, the new update for Bing Webmaster Tools is called “Phoenix” and as per me and many other WebMasters and blogger like me, this is the best update that Bing has published yet.
The Phoenix update mainly comprises of new tools like Link Explorer, SEO Analyzer/SEO Reports. In addition to these, they also made updates to their current tools which include the Keyword Research Tool and the URL Removal Tool.
New Dashboard Interface
With the Phoenix update, Bing Webmaster Tools has published an entirely new look and feels for the dashboard which allowing users quick and easy access to their data. Users will now be able to see all the top level data including site activity, sitemaps, search keywords, and diagnostic tools through the new dashboard interface. We can customize the data according to the date range that is handled easily through a drop-down menu.
Link Explorer (Beta)
This is one of the most important features with the Phoenix Update. Now Bing Webmasters can explore links related to a particular domain. The only thing you need to do is that you will have to enter the URL that you want to explore and the tool will generate a list of links pointing to that URL.
With its preset settings, Link Explorer will only display the external links pointing to the specified URL, but we have the option to select the internal URL and to also filter both the external and internal links on the basis of a particular anchor text.
SEO Reports
Here is a very interesting new feature. We will now be able to get SEO reports directly from Bing Webmaster. The system uses and scans some of the essential SEO optimization elements and if the site has any issues relating to best SEO practices, they will be displayed in the reporting section. Bing Webmasters will give SEO suggestions for improving site traffic.
If you dig deeper into any of the above-mentioned suggestions, you’ll be able to see a detailed summary with just a few clicks.
The system itself will diagnose issues like missing alt attributes for images, missing of meta language information, too short or too long page titles, missing meta descriptions and their length. This will be very helpful for performing audit reports and for reporting fixes.
SEO Analyzer
Bing Webmaster uses the same SEO element analysis which the SEO reports employ and will scan any of the URLs entered from any of the webmaster’s verified accounts. You’re then able to generate a report. The tool also gives SEO suggestions for improving your website traffic. This is a very useful feature since we will now be able to check each page to get a better understanding of additional optimization strategies.
Immediately after entering the URL that you want to check, you’ll notice the outcome of the scan appears on the left-hand side of the screen. On the right-hand side, you’ll see the web page data as a preview and the problem will be highlighted. We also have the option to better understand website issues which are highlighted with page source and the original page as seen below.
Another new feature added is Fetch as Bingbot which is similar to the fetch as Googlebot from Google Webmaster Tools. Canonical Alerts is another important update which monitors the use of canonical tags throughout the site and if you have incorrect canonical tags setup, Bing Webmaster Tools will identify them and alert you.
Another remarkable update is the Bing Keyword Research Tool with enhanced features that include keyword research for multiple phrases at the same time. Here we have the option of checking multiple countries at the same time as well.
In my opinion, Bing did a great job through the Phoenix update and this has been the best update offered by Bing so far. Internet marketers can now employ BWT in new ways, including making it a part of site audits and for improving the site traffic.
One important thing they missed in this update (compared to GWT) is the geographic targeting to a specific country. Hopefully, they will make this part of their next update.
