it is not a tool for any SEO need but it comes from Google itself and it offers lots of vital SEO insights and Out of the many SEO tools, Google Webmaster Tools is one of the most useful. It doesn't have all the perks of commercial SEO suites. All these are good reasons to start
using Google Webamaster Tools.
What Is Google Webmaster Tools?
It
is hardly difficult to guess from the name itself that Google Webmaster
Tools is a set of tools for webmasters. However, what you don't know
right away is that this is a very useful toolset that allows you to
communicate with Google and adjust many aspects of how Google sees your
site, such as list the external and internal links to your site, adjust
the crawl rate at which Google bot indexes your site, check the keywords
users typed to land on your site, as well as the click through rate for
each keyword, see your site's statistics, and many more.
One
issue that needs mentioning is privacy concerns. Since you are giving
Google a full access to your site's stats, you might be worried about
how they handle this data. While Google is a reputable company and it is
not very likely they will abuse the data you are giving them access to,
if confidentiality is a top concern for you, think twice before letting
Google (or any other statistics solution, for that matter) to your
site's secrets.
If
you use Google Webmaster Tools together with Google Analytics, the
results will be even better. You can access your Google Webmaster Tools
data directly from Google Analytics, so if you are already using Google
Analytics, with just some more effort you could easily integrate it with
Google Webmaster Tools, too.
How Do I Get Started?
In order to use Google Webmaster Tools, you need to join it first. You can do it from here.
After you join, you need to go through the verification process, so
that Google knows you are the legit owner of the site you want to use
Google Webmaster Tools on.
There
are several ways to verify ownership. The first one is to download an
HTML file and to upload it to the root directory of your site. Another
one is to add an HTML tag into the head of your home page. If you are
using the same Google account for Google Analytics, a third option to
verify ownership is through Google Analytics. There are more ways to
verify ownership but if you are interested in them, check the Google
Webmaster Tools settings and you will see them.
Google Webmaster Tools to Use Daily
Once
you have verified your ownership and have Google code in place on your
site, you can now start enjoying the advantages of Google Webmaster
Tools. When you log into your Google Webmaster Tools account, the first
thing you see is the Dashboard:
From
here you can access all the major sections - Search Queries, Links to
Your Site, Crawl Errors, Keywords, and Sitemaps. Clicking on any of
these will open the respective section.
Search Queries
The Search Queries section shows the keywords that led users to your site.
This
long list shows which keywords users searched for when they came to
your site. It is best if this list matches the keywords you are
optimizing for but very frequently this list contains good keywords you
were unaware of. In this case, pick these good keywords and start
optimizing for them, too.
In
the Search Queries section, you can also see the number of impressions
and the number of clicks, which gives you an idea about the CTR for this
keyword. All equal, a higher CTR means the keyword is relevant, so you
might want to invest some more efforts into this keyword. However, if
you notice that as a result of your efforts, the CTR goes down, it is
best if you don't touch this keyword anymore.
Links
The second very useful section of Google Webmaster Tools is the Links to Your Site section.
Here you can see where your backlinks (internal
and external) come from, as well as the pages they are linking to. As
with other link checking tools, don't expect that every single link to
your site is displayed but nevertheless this list of backlinks is useful
to check from time to time.
One
of the advanced uses of the Links section is to disavow links to your
site you deem harmful. Links from bad sites can hurt your rankings.
Crawl Errors
The
Crawl Errors section shows the errors Google bot encountered on your
site. The data you get is similar to what you get when you use the Spider Simulator and
it shows inaccessible pages, missing pages, server errors, and all
sorts of problems that prevented Google from correctly crawling your
site. You also get some other crawl stats (such as the number of pages
crawled a day) that are useful to know.
Keywords
Similarly
to the Search Queries section that also deals with keywords (but it is
the ones users type to get to your site), the Keywords section also
shows keywords. However, the difference is that here you see what
keywords (and their significance) Google has found on your site. The two
lists (of keywords users type and the keywords Google finds on your
site) could be very different, which means you are not optimizing for
what users are searching for.
Sitemaps
The last section you can access from the Dashboard is the Sitemaps section. Here you see the sitemaps of
your site Google has found and the number of URLs in them. If the
sitemap found by Google is different from what you expected it to be,
you can submit a new sitemap for Google to use.
Robots.txt and Other Advanced Stuff
The
sections described so far are the basic Google Webmaster Tools
sections. There is also a lot of advanced stuff in each of them but we
won't describe it into details. For instance, you can use your Google
Webmaster Tools to submit a robots.txt file,
or to set the preferred domain syntax (i.e. with or without www) to be
displayed in search results. Google Webmaster Tools also allows to know
if your site is infected with malware. If it is, you need to clean it
first and then resubmit it for review.
Google
Webmaster Tools is a really valuable instrument for SEO. It gives you
at a glance data about all important SEO aspects of a site, such as
keywords, links, crawl errors, etc. If you don't use it already, take
the time and get familiar with it – it will help you get better rankings
for sure.
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