How to get keyword research data from Bing Webmaster Tools
You can use the free keyword research data from Bing to see what you should try to “rank” for in Google. Here’s how!
Why should you get keyword data from Bing Webmaster Tools?
You might think to yourself, “Who cares about Bing? I want to rank on Google!” I tend to agree. However, remember our goal: put data behind keywords so we know our customers are searching for these words. If we don’t put data behind our keywords we might end up trying to “optimize” a page for a word for which nobody else is searching.
In this sense, it doesn’t matter if the data comes from Bing, Google Keyword Planner, or Google Trends: we just want to confirm other people have thought of the same keyword we did before we try to optimize for it.
What should you expect from the Bing Webmaster Tools data?
The Keyword Research tool in Bing Webmaster Tools provides a number of “impressions” for each keyword. An “impression” tells us how many people saw this phrase in a Bing search result (within an undisclosed amount of time).
This number is very different than other sources we might use. For instance, the Google Keyword Planner gives us “Average Search Volume” in the last month. On the other hand, Google Trends gives us a number between zero and 100 representing interest at any given time. All three numbers reflect different data points- so don’t try to compare these numbers with each other. Choose one source of data (whichever is easiest for you to access) and use that for the entirety of your keyword research. The value we get is when we use data to compare several terms against the same data point, rather than collecting several data points with the same keyword.
That being said, we all know that Bing has a much smaller audience than Google. That means, they might not have data on some less-common keywords for which Google might have data. This is why the Google Keyword Planner is the best option for keyword data- if you have access to it, that is. If not, the Keyword Research tool in Bing Webmaster Tools will still help you- even if you want to “rank” better in Google.
To access this process you need to signup for free access.
