Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the best one-source tool to learn and improve upon your standing with search engines: Google Webmaster Tools.
Google provides this tool…get this…for FREE…to anyone who takes the time to verify site ownership and create a Site Map XML file. Dedicating a little time to check data such as the search queries that listed your site, errors that Google’s bots encountered while indexing, and recommended improvements (delivered straight from the horse’s mouth) will undoubtedly improve your site’s performance with the proper adjustments.
Part 1: The Dashboard
The Dashboard is a summary look at the most relevant daily reporting information.
Search Queries
Here you can review keyword search terms that users queried to find your site as well as the number of times each of the terms were clicked. Use this data to assess your keyword optimization – whether your site is communicating to Google the terms that you wish to be found for, and which terms you need to sprinkle into SEO-relevant places to improve the quality of your site traffic.
Links to Your Site
Google also reports the pages on your site that are linked-to from other sites in the dashboard. If your site has quality and/or valuable content, you will likely find links from sources that you never submitted to. This ‘organic’ link-building can be a terrific method of building affordable and valuable links.
Crawl Errors
Google will additionally list any crawl errors that their bots encountered while indexing your site. Here you will be able to identify any broken links, an occurrence that can sometimes slip through the cracks after updated are made or changes occur in your business. Once you’ve found broken links or links that are blocked for search engine bots, you will be able to assess how to address them, whether by redirecting them to another page, correcting the issue, removing the page from your sitemap.xml file, or otherwise removing the virtual dead-end.
Keywords
This section reports that keywords that Google associates with your site. Similar to the Search Queries section but more directly addressable, these are the terms that Google associates with your site, regardless of whether they have been searched. Ultimately this is a more effective starting point for improving your search standing since they can be addressed with fewer unknown variables (such as search competitiveness) at play.
Sitemaps
Lastly, Google provides the status of your sitemap.xml file, and how many pages that it indexes for your site. More of a threshold check and update on your current standing, few improvements are made here other than correcting any problems Google has loading your sitemap (which should be none). Nevertheless, the number of indexed URLs is valuable data that will help you monitor progress as you make improvements.
Check back soon for Google Webmaster Tools Part 2: Site Configuration (Now available)