I wanted to talk about Google Webmaster Tools for a minute. If you have not taken full advantage of all that GWT has to offer in your Internet marketing
efforts, I strongly recommend you do.
First, you should create a central Google cccounts account and this way you can access all of Google's tools, like GWT, Analytics, Adsense and more at: Create Google Account
Always submit your sites and sitemaps to GWT once they are complete. Forget all the crap you hear about "let the SE's discover your site on their own." This is stupid and you don't have to wait. Google wants you to submit to them, they ask you to and recommend that you do, see it here.
Besides submitting your sites for indexing and crawling, GWT offers lots of valuable tools to analyze your websites and their performance in Google, as well as detect any problems that may occur with them.
OVERVIEW TAB
In overview you can see how often your site is crawled and more important you can see the INDEX STATS.
Benefits: You can see which webpages are indexed, the current cache of your site, links to your home page and more.
DIAGNOSIS TAB
Web Crawl
Let's you see any problems that Google had with crawling specific pages on your site, URL not found, HTTP errors and more (It will show those you blocked by robots.txt but you can ignore those).
A couple of days ago, Google announced a great new feature added to this section called "Linked From", this will show where the source URL that the broken pages are being linked from, both externally and internally. Learn more about this feature at Google's Webmaster Blog.
Benefits: Allows you to see real accessibility problems with your website pages that you need to address to make sure those webpages are indexable and working properly.
Content Analysis
Shows potential problems with Meta Tags and duplicate Meta Tags that may be occurring on your website pages. This just proves the point I hammered in Complete Guide to Meta Tags, that Google does pay attention to those. Contrary to some people's beliefs that they are worthless, they need to be personalized and customized for EVERY page of your website.
Benefits: Allows you to optimize Meta Tags and shows you those you may have missed, as in duplicate Meta Tags.
STATISTICS TAB
Top Search Queries will show you 2 things:
1. Traffic - What keywords are being used by searchers to find your site
2. Impressions - The top 20 search queries in which your site appeared, and the percentage of the top 20 queries represented by each search.
Both of these also show your position in SERPS for those keywords/search terms.
Benefits: Essential analysis of what keywords your site is showing up for and ranking in.
What Googlebot Sees
This one is very useful and will show you 3 Things:
1. Anchor Text Phrases in External Backlinks to your site!
2. Keywords appearing ON your site
3. Keywords used in anchor text in external links to your site
Benefits: Huge benefits! Allows you to be sure your website is optimized for the keywords and phrases you want it too. Seeing anchor text phrases and keywords to make sure you are anchoring correctly in your backlinks for the keywords you want to rank for.
LINKS TAB
Pages with External Links:
This is a great one and shows you numbers of as well as all the pages on your site that have external links pointing to them.
Benefit: This is good for analyzing where you need work on building more deep page backlinks for your site. Remember when link building it is important to link not only to your home page but also to deep pages as well, learn more at: Article Marketing Backlink Techniques
Pages with Internal Links:
This one is to analyze your internal link building for on-site SEO. Remember that linking internally to pages within your own site is very important, not only for allowing Google to relate your pages with keywords but also to lower the bounce rate and allow for easier navigation for your visitors. Google wrote about good internal link structure on their webmaster's blog just this week.
Benefits: Huge! Allows you to make sure that internal link structure is optimal and where it may need work.
OTHER TABS
Sitemaps
This is where you can see any errors or warnings about your sitemap that Google found. This is important analysis for indexing your site pages correctly.
TOOLS TAB
The Tools Tab has lots of features. A couple of important ones to be noted are:
Analyze Robots
Check your robots.txt file and if Google was able to access it without problems.
Set Preferred Domain
Here you can set how you want your domain to display in the index. You can set all occurrences of your domain to be either http://www.yourdomain OR http://yourdomain (without the www).
Benefits: This is important because people will link to you in different ways so, if you set a preference, you let Google know which URL you prefer and avoid any duplicate content issues that may occur.
Google Webmaster Tools are a must have for any blogger or website owner! Between GWT and Analytics, a blogger can find every bit of info they really need to optimize their blogs.
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I have found WT to be especially useful when I find that a client is having trouble getting indexed by Google or is banned. You can submit a reinclusion request through WT’s and submitting your sitemap to the source is always helpful to get indexed.
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Hi Hayden,
Welcome, great points especially about reinclusion, good to all ready have stuff set up.
Follow Me on Twitter @: npxpcom
(9 comments)
As far as I know Google Webmaster Tools is the best tool on the Internet for webmasters. Primarily because we can know what Google sees in our site…
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Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(224 comments)
Wow excellent guide buddy! (Or is that buddress? hehe)
I’ve been meaning to dive into GWT forever!
I dunno if submitting to GWT is the same as submitting to their search engine, but Google themselves have written more then once that it is smarter to let them crawl first instead of self submission…..now if I can find where I read that…..
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Hi Dennis,
Budress???!!??
You can submit a sitemap to GWT and submit your site to G at: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl, two different actions that accomplish the same goal of submission for indexing except the latter is without the actual tools.
And, in relation to what you read, not sure what you are referring to but here is the a quote directly from G Webmaster Guidelines, that can be found at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&topic=15260 and it says:
“When your site is ready:
* Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
* Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
* Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.”
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
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Feedburner or whoever sent me this reply about 6 times, you might wanna look into that.
Dennis Edells last blog post..7 Tips for Choosing a Business Name
Had to edit typos a couple of times so resubmitted comment a few times, sorry.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
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Ah np, much better then a feedburner issue
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Hi, Jr:
I belong to GWT and have most of my blogs listed. I swear everytime i read an article on GWT (such as this one) i learn something new.
Didn’t know about the “What Googlebot Sees” tab or about the “Internal Linking” report tab. Very cool tool.
I need to do some major SEO and link analysis with my veg blog (Groovy Vegetarian) as it has stalled at PR 2, for about 3 updates now. I have never been able to figure out the meta tags thing or the sitemap thing. I tried once to add a sitemap to the blog and it screwed something up. I have fussed with it since.
Plus i read somewhere a sitemap is not really necessary for an established blog. It is just kind of an extra and is meant for new blogs.
As for my continuous PR 2 status i was told to limit the links on the homepage, and to add “nofollow” to ad links and to sidebar links. (not the blogroll links, but everything else)
Awesome post!
Missy.
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Hi Missy,
Thanks. I know there is so much in GWT, that it is easy to miss things. Are you using WordPress? if you are, then get this XML Sitemap plug-in for WP two clicks and you have a great sitemap to give to G, it really helps. Plus read my guide to Meta Tags and it will show you how to do them, very simply!
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
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A definite thums up for this here plugin…now I need to look for that guide
Dennis Edells last blog post..So I’ve Started to Monetize – Link Love Style
Hi Dennis,
Actually the link is to the designer’s website, shows all the steps, it’s very easy!!
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
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I meant your guide to meta tags, I already have the plugin
Dennis Edells last blog post..So I’ve Started to Monetize – Link Love Style
Ahh gotcha!
GWT was definitely a godsend for me: I was able to diagnose (and fix) several duplicate content issues and this has helped in my SERP. Also, I can see the links more clearly than when you do one of those Link searches in Google search engine.
For the price (FREE), a great value! Highly Recommended, like Google Chrome.
Hey Matt,
Yeah the link search is much more comprehensive in GWT than the other way, the other way straight SUCKS!
kudos to you JR for this explanation, really helpful. I just registered with GWT lately and still looking around for explanation. Boom, I found yours! thanks
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Hello Norhafidz
You are very welcome!
I use GWT for my main website but I also have a blogger blog that I would like to verify in GWT.. Can you do this with a blogger blog? I haven’t checked it out fully but I thought you guys might know as heaps of people are mentioning blogs…
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@ Computer Tips,
Yes you can use it in blogger, you have to add the verification key in Header Tag in blogger which is accessible through your dashboard. I believe you click on “LAYOUT”, then “EDIT HTML” and there you have the header source code, just follow instructions from Webmaster Tools to add your code, you can also add G Analytics to track your traffic as well.
Excellent guide JR … thanks a lot !
Kind regards from Belgium
Erdal Gul
Hey. very good post.
I always pay attention to GWT has to say, I always use the Diagnostics tab. Plus, every time i update my site I also update my sitemap files with the new pages. It has been working very well for me and my pages are indexed very fast.