Google Webmaster Tools: See what Google Sees
For those of us managing websites and looking for ways to accurately gauge and improve our performance on Google, Webmaster Tools is a free resource to help you optimise your website.
What are Webmaster Tools
In the words of Google:
"Our suite of webmaster tools provides you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. They can show you Google’s view of your site, help you diagnose problems, and let you share info with us to help improve your site’s visibility."
There are 3 key things you can accomplish with these tools.
1. Diagnosis
You will be able to see how Google is viewing your website, and diagnose potential problems that may limiting the success of your website.
2. Performance
View the top queries that drive traffic to your site and where your site is included in the top search results. See how your site is indexed and which of your pages are included in the Google index.
3. Submission
Tell Google how to index your website by submitting a sitemap.
How to get it
Firstly, if you haven't already, sign up for a Google Account. This will give you access to the Webmaster Tools, as well as a host of other essential freebies such as Google Analytics.
Step 1: Click here to go to the Webmaster Tools Page
Step 2: If you already have a Google Account - Login
OR
Click the 'Create a Google Account' Link
Once you have completed your account - you should be taken directly to the webmaster tools
Step 1. Add your Website
You can add multiple sites that you wish to analyse via the 'Dashboard'. Type in the URL of the site you want to add, and click the 'Add Site' Button.Step 2. Verify Your Website
Google needs to verify that you have a genuine relationship to the website you have just added. The way it does this is to get you to put a unique identifier on your website – this way, you prove that you have access to upload files to the website in question.
The easiest way to verify your site is by adding a META tag to the homepage of your website.
After adding your site in step one, you should see a box as follows:-
Click the 'Verify your site' link and choose the 'Add a meta tag…' option from the 'Choose Verification Method…' drop down menu.
A unique identifier will be generated for you that looks like this (this one is just for illustrative purposes & won't work):-<
<meta name="verify-v1" content="vKaOSgZFcGKs3/K35eaywuhc5bo6iS4Daz1iEiU+pCo=" />
Add this meta tag in the HEAD section of the HTML of your homepage and upload the file.
Once uploaded, click the 'Verify' button, and Google will then check your home page to see if the code you added is present. If it is, your website is now verified.
How to use the tools
There are 4 tabs at the top of the page – Diagnostic, Statistics, Links, Sitemaps
Diagnosic Tab:
The Diagnostic Tab will give you a summary of :
- when your website was last indexed by Googlebot (Google's indexing software)
- whether your site has pages included in Google's index
- Web Crawl errors
Assuming you have ticks by the first 2, the most useful tool here is the Web Crawl errors.
The read-out here will let you identify any areas that need fixing on your website. Every HTTP error, Not Found, or Unreachable URL can damage your search engine ranking and requires urgent attention.
In the example below, there are 3 Not Found errors. Clicking on this link reveals the missing pages in question. In this case I am able to either find the missing pages and upload them, or find the pages that are pointing to these missing pages, and correct the bad links.
Other Tools
There are further tools in the Diagnostic section that can be useful in your quest for an error free website., including a URL Removal tool, by which you can request to remove missing pages from Google index.
Statistics Tab:
The Statistics tab offers you general site, page and keyword statistics that you can use to form a picture of how well your website is performing.
The most useful of these is Query Stats:-
Query Stats
Here you will see 2 tables:-
Top Search Queries shows you the top Google search terms over the last 7 days that resulted in a page from your website being returned, as well as the average position of your listing on the page.
Top Search Query Clicks shows the top search queries over the last 7 days that resulted in visits to your site.
This tool can be used to spot any pages that may well be showing up in a lot of searches (i.e. in top search queries table) but not driving traffic to your website (i.e. not in top search query clicks table).
In the example above, we can see that the top search query that returns a listing for this particular website, is 'ashburton', however that doesn't feature in the the 'search query clicks' table.
In this case we would want to see what page on our site is returned on Google for the search 'ashburton' and work out why the listing is not attracting people to click on it. Perhaps the title or description tags, or even page content may need work to make the listing more attractive.
Either way, it's an opportunity to rectify the problem and increase traffic to the site.
Page Analysis
This page shows you how Googlebot sees your website, including content on your website, and links from external sites to yours.
You want Google to be in no doubt as to what your website is about, and since one of the main factors helping Google decide on this is the content of your website and the links coming into your site, this page can tell you if your link anchor text, and site keyword density is correct.
The first table, Phrases: in external links to your site, shows you the anchor text links from external sites being picked up by Google. Ideally you want each one of these external links to reference your most important keywords.
If you see a lot of links without your keywords in the link text, or you don’t have any level of consistency across the board, it could be time to put in place a policy when exchanging links with external sites.
The next table Keywords: in your site's content shows you the top 100 keywords that Google has picked up from the content on your website. If relevant keywords to your business are not showing at the top of this list, it's time to rework your website content.
The third table is Keywords: in external links to your site and ranks the keywords in the anchor text of links from websites that link to you. Again, if your keywords are not showing up here, it's time to formulate a plan to get them in there.
Links Tab
This section is useful for seeing how many links from external sites Google has picked up. Your homepage is generally the most 'valuable' page on your website, so you would hope to see most external links to be pointing there.
Click the number of external links next to a particular page in that table and you will see a full list of all external sites linking in to that page, and when the link was last found.
In Search Engine Optimisation terms you want high quality, relevant websites linking to you (ideally one way links). If you haven’t got them, it's time to look at a program of quality link building.
Within this section you can also see the internal linking within your site. This is useful to see the internal 'weighting' you are giving to certain pages. The more links you have internally to a particular page, the more importance you are telling Google to attach to it.
SiteMaps Tab
The final tab allows you to manage and upload a sitemap to Google.
"You can use a sitemap file to tell Google about all the pages on your site, and optionally, to provide information about those pages, such as which are most important and how often they change. Sitemaps are particularly helpful if your site has dynamic content, pages that aren't easily discovered by following links, or if your site is new and has few links to it."
Read more about SiteMaps here.
Conclusion
Whilst there are a lot of tools and analysers out there that can tell you a lot about your website and help you optimise each and every page on your website, Google Webmaster tools tells you exactly how Google sees your website, and gives you the opportunity to fix any outstanding issues.
Even if you only visit the tools every so often to get an all clear on your website, it is worth doing – and best of all – it is free!
