Without doubt, Bing is growing in market share, and it is becoming increasingly worth the effort for news suppliers to get their websites included in Bing, as well as Google News (for details on this, check our feature, “How to submit to Google News”). As with submissions to Google News, suppliers will need to get some essential preliminaries in place, which we have summarized in our “What to do before you set up a news feed” feature. The four most crucial preliminaries are:
- Getting the news website URL structure right (every fresh news post needs a unique URL with a unique three-digit identifier number).
- Choosing the right support platform. The free open source content management service WordPress is excellent. This is also covered in our feature, “How to submit to Google News.”
- Selecting a rock-solid reliable web-hosting service (do not choose a cheap one that will crash after a few thousand clicks on the latest news post). WordPress supports thousands of good web hosts, and lists the ones it considers the most reliable.
- Do not neglect the quality of the news content. There are essential journalistic rules to writing a good news story, above and beyond the need for impeccable grammar and spelling. At Purecontent, we can help – we have a team of professional news writers that provide content of high quality to our clients every day.
Now comes the “Bing specific” stuff. Once the prerequisites we have just itemized are in place, open a “Bing support ticket” at “support.discoverbing.com/default.aspx.” From there, inform the Bing team that you wish your website to be included in Bing News, and supply the following:
- Introductory comments, historical background information and site credentials.
- If the site has a verifiable and credible ranking in the field, give details.
- The audience scope or locale the site’s news content is designed to cover (don’t forget to describe the groups of users and/or the state and city names, with zip codes).
- The site’s statistics.
- The focus of the site (is it chiefly news related for example?). Don’t be afraid to give explanations.
- Supply the main news entry point’s URL. If there are other major channels with entry points on the site, also supply those URLs.
- Provide the site’s RSS feed link.
- Make sure that the site complies with the technical requirements of good search engine optimization, as set out in the Webmaster Tools blog of the same title.
Content suppliers seeking inclusion on Bing News will also need a back-catalogue of news articles stretching over at least three months. It is preferable to have at least two articles a day in this catalogue. Unlike Google News, don’t just sit around waiting for a response – email bns@microsoft.com to enquire about the progress of the application for inclusion (and email again if you don’t hear back).
Some realistic expectations are required however as getting included in Bing News is notoriously difficult. At Purecontent, we have the experience and the expertise needed to produce first class content that is optimized for search engines. This facilitates faster than normal entry into the Bing News category for our news clients.
You must be logged in to post a comment.