Everybody with a Web site or blog wants to increase their search engine rankings. But many businesses and individuals neglect to use even the most basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques.

I’m going to teach you how to do a couple of basic things that will make the search engines notice your site. Don’t freak out on me – YOU CAN DO THIS! Not only can you do it, but it only takes a few minutes, and it won’t cost you a penny.

Is Bing Indexing Your Site?

You’ve probably heard of Microsoft’s cool new search engine, Bing (it replaced Live Search, which was originally known as MSN Search).

You want to ensure that Bing’s search bots are crawling your site. To do that, go to http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx, type in your site’s URL – http://www.MySite.com/ – and click “Submit URL.”

How to Submit Your Sitemap to Bing

You can also submit your Sitemap to Bing, to ensure that your every page on your site gets indexed on a regular basis. This is super easy to do:

Copy and paste the URL below into the address bar of your browser — be sure to change “www.YourWebAddress.com” to your domain name — and then press ENTER:

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml

How to Submit Your Business Site to Bing Local

If you own a business, you’ll want to submit your business site to Bing Local (it’s kind of like a local yellow pages listing for your site, only it’s free).

First, visit this site https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx to check whether a listing for your business already exists. To check, enter your business name, address, and phone number.

If Bing can’t find a listing, it will prompt you to log in to your Windows Live account and create a business listing (if you don’t have a Windows Live account, you’ll have to create that first).

Next, fill in the requested information. You have the option of entering all sorts of information about your business, including operating hours, payment methods you accept, company tagline and description, specialties, brands carried, etc. You can also upload up to 10 photos (maximum image size 5MB) that will appear on the details page for your business.

You’ll need to choose a category for your business (Bing allows you to list your business in six categories and to organize them in order of importance).

Before you submit your listing, you’ll be able to review it:

Bing will send a letter to the address you entered for your listing, and you will follow the directions in the letter to complete the verification process.

For more information about Bing, visit Bing’s Webmaster Tools

Also in this series:

• How to submit your site to Yahoo Local
  

• How To Create Your Google Profile