Most sites have never done a single piece of keyword research for Bing. They researched keywords for Google, built content for Google, and assumed Bing would follow along. Often it does not, and the gap between what a site ranks for on Google and what it could rank for on Bing represents real traffic that nobody is competing for.
This article lays out a workflow for closing that gap. It is designed for teams that have never touched Bing deliberately, it uses free data sources wherever possible, and it ends with a worked example. Expect it to take an afternoon to set up and about an hour a week to maintain.
Why Bing keywords are different keywords
The instinct is to take your Google keyword list and check it on Bing. That is a reasonable first step, but it misses the more interesting opportunity: keywords that behave differently on Bing than on Google.
Three things drive the difference. First, Bing’s audience is more desktop-heavy and more enterprise-heavy, so query mix skews toward research, comparison, and B2B intent; “near me” mobile queries carry proportionally less. Second, competition is thinner. Because so few sites optimize for Bing, the pages ranking for a query are often whatever Bing happened to find rather than pages built to win, and displacing them takes less effort. Third, Bing weights signals differently. Exact keyword matches in titles and URLs, page-level quality, and freshness carry more weight.
The upshot is that your best Bing keywords are often longer, more specific, more commercial, and less contested than your best Google keywords. Finding them requires Bing’s own data.
Step 1: Pull Bing’s view of your site
Start in Bing Webmaster Tools. If your site is not verified there, verify it now; Google Search Console users can import verification directly. Open the Search Performance report, set the range to the last three months, and look for three groups of queries:
- Queries with impressions but low clicks, where you appear on page one or two but are not earning the click. Bing already considers you relevant, so these are the fastest wins.
- Queries where your average position is between 8 and 20. A push from position 12 to position 5 typically produces a large traffic change, and the distance is short.
- Queries that do not appear in your Google Search Console data at all. These are Bing-specific demand signals, often pointing to topics your content covers incidentally but has never targeted.
Export this data for the next step.
Step 2: Expand with Bing’s keyword research tool
Bing Webmaster Tools includes a keyword research feature that reports Bing-specific search volume rather than Google-derived estimates. Run your seed terms from the export above and from your product categories through it, filtered by the countries you sell in.
Pay attention to two things. The first is volume ratios: if a keyword shows meaningful Bing volume relative to its Google volume, the Bing audience cares about it disproportionately and it deserves priority. The second is related queries the tool surfaces that you have never targeted. These come from Bing’s query logs, so they reflect how Bing users actually phrase things, which is frequently more formal and specific than Google phrasing.
Build a candidate list of thirty to eighty keywords. Include the keyword, the Bing monthly volume, the country, and a note on intent (informational, commercial, transactional).
Step 3: Map keywords to pages
For each candidate keyword, decide which page on your site should rank for it. This is where most Bing efforts stall, because teams try to rank a page that does not address the query, then blame Bing when it fails. Use a three-way classification:
- Existing page, good fit. The page already covers the topic and the keyword can be added to the title, headings, and body without distortion. These are your primary targets.
- Existing page, partial fit. The page touches the topic but needs a new section or a substantial rewrite.
- No page. The keyword needs new content. Park these unless the volume is compelling.
While mapping, remember that a page whose URL and title contain the target phrase verbatim has an advantage on Bing. If your titles are creative rather than descriptive, note that as a fix.
Step 4: Check current positions properly
Before you change anything, record where each mapped keyword currently ranks on Bing in each target country. Without this baseline, you will not know in six weeks whether your changes worked.
Do not do this by hand in a browser; your results are personalized to your own location and cannot be repeated identically later. Use a bing keyword rank checker that queries Bing from the correct country and records verified positions on a fixed schedule. Add your top competitors as well, so you can see who currently holds the positions you want and whether they are moving.
Record the baseline in your keyword spreadsheet. Now every row has a keyword, a volume, a target page, a current position, and the competitors above you.
Step 5: Prioritize quick wins
With the baseline in hand, score each keyword on four factors:
- Current position. Positions 5 through 20 are the sweet spot. Positions 1 through 4 need defending, not improving. Beyond 30 is a longer project.
- Volume and intent. Commercial and transactional queries with real Bing volume outrank informational queries with higher volume, because they convert.
- Effort. Title and heading changes on a good-fit page take minutes. A new section takes hours. A new page takes days.
- Competition. If the pages above you are thin, outdated, or from weak domains, the keyword is winnable. If they are comprehensive pages from major brands, deprioritize it.
Rank the list and take the top ten or fifteen as your first sprint. Working on everything at once makes it impossible to attribute results.
Step 6: Make the changes Bing responds to
For each sprint keyword, apply changes in rough order of Bing’s sensitivity:
- Title tag. Put the target phrase near the front, in natural language. Bing weights titles heavily.
- H1 and H2s. Use the exact phrase or a close variant in the H1, and make sure at least one subheading addresses the specific angle the query implies.
- First paragraph. Answer the query directly in the opening lines. Bing, like Google, favors pages that get to the point.
- Freshness. Update the content meaningfully and set the modified date. If you can implement IndexNow, submit the URL immediately so Bing re-crawls without waiting.
- Internal links. Link to the page from related pages using the target phrase as anchor text. Bing’s page-level evaluation still benefits from clear internal signals.
- Distribution. Share the updated page wherever your audience is. Bing has been more open than Google about social engagement influencing rankings.
Step 7: Track movement over weeks, not days
Bing rankings move on a weekly rhythm more than a daily one, and re-crawling can take a week or two even with IndexNow. Set your tracker to weekly checks, and do not touch the sprint pages again for at least three weeks; if you keep tweaking, you will never know which change mattered.
Each week, compare every sprint keyword against its baseline and against the competitors you are tracking. Three patterns are common:
- Steady climb. The page moves up a few positions each week. Leave it alone.
- No movement after four weeks. Confirm in Bing Webmaster Tools that the page was re-crawled. If it was, the fit is probably wrong, and the keyword needs deeper work.
- Movement on Bing but not Google, or vice versa. This is normal and informative. It tells you which engine responds to which type of change.
After six weeks, close the sprint, record results, and start the next batch. Over two or three sprints, you will have a clear model of what Bing rewards on your site specifically.
A worked example
Consider a hypothetical B2B SaaS company selling project management software to mid-sized professional services firms. Their Google SEO is mature; they have never looked at Bing.
Step 1. They verify in Bing Webmaster Tools and pull three months of data. They discover 340 queries with impressions. Among them, “project management software for consulting firms” has 2,100 impressions, an average position of 11, and 38 clicks. Google Search Console shows the same query with far lower relative impressions. The Bing audience is asking this question more.
Step 2. Bing’s keyword tool reveals related queries they have never targeted: “resource planning software for professional services” and “project profitability software.” The volumes are modest, a few hundred a month each, but the intent is unmistakably commercial.
Step 3. They map “project management software for consulting firms” to an existing industry landing page that mentions consulting firms in the body but has a generic title. “Resource planning software for professional services” maps to a feature page that needs a new section. “Project profitability software” has no page and is parked.
Step 4. They set up tracking for twelve keywords in the US and UK with three competitors. Baseline: the consulting landing page sits at position 11 in the US and 14 in the UK. Two competitors hold positions 3 and 6 with pages not updated in over a year.
Step 5. The consulting query scores highest: good position, commercial intent, minimal effort, weak competition. It leads the sprint with seven other keywords.
Step 6. They rewrite the title to lead with “Project Management Software for Consulting Firms,” adjust the H1, add an opening paragraph that answers the query, add a resource planning section that also serves the second keyword, refresh a case study, submit through IndexNow, and add internal links from three related posts.
Step 7. Week two shows the page at position 8 in the US. Week four, position 5. Week six, position 4, just behind the incumbent at 3, with UK position at 7. Bing organic sessions to the page have tripled, and two demo requests are attributed to Bing organic in the period, where previously there were none. On Google, the same page moved from 9 to 7, a smaller shift that fits the pattern of Bing responding faster to on-page changes.
The company now has evidence that Bing converts for them, a repeatable process, and a prioritized list for the next sprint. Total effort was under two days spread across six weeks.
Keeping the workflow lightweight
Most teams never get around to Bing because it feels like a second SEO program. It does not need to be. The data sources are free, the keyword list is small, and the changes are on-page fundamentals you already know. The one piece of infrastructure you need is reliable weekly position data by country with competitor context. The tracker from Broken Link Checker covers 24 countries with verified weekly checks and up to five competitors, and its free tier tracks ten keywords, which is exactly the size of a first sprint. It is part of the same suite as the link checker, so teams already using that for technical audits can add Bing tracking without a new vendor.
Run one sprint. If the numbers look like the example above, and for many B2B and desktop-heavy sites they will, you have found demand nobody else is chasing. If they do not, you have spent an afternoon and learned something true about your audience.
