Digital marketing services

1
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

2
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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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, so if you want to get rid of
them, follow the instructions in this
article. 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.
6
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. The
Keywords section also allows to see the theme of
your site, which post Panda has become even more
important. 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.
7
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.