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Google Webmaster Tools 101
If you're building a website with BlueVoda or are the owner of a website then you will want people from around the world to be able to find your website on the internet. The way that most visitors will find your website will be through a search engine and more often than not, your visitors will be using Google search. For visitors to find your website through using search engine they'll enter what they want to find and then wait on the results, which may or may not contain your website. Using Google webmaster Tools is a great way to find out why Google is or is not listing your website in its search results for certain searches and how to make your website as available to as many of your target customers as possible.
Google Webmaster Tools gives you tons of information about your website and how to give it the best search engine exposure it can possibly get. It is a fantastically powerful collection of free, online tools to let you find out by what searches internet users worldwide are finding your site and how Google itself sees your site and places it within its search results. It lets you see whether there are any problems with your site that is stopping Google from reaching certain parts of it and lets you see which other internet sites have links which are pointing to it (which is very important for SEO). You can even submit a sitemap to Google using these tools and many believe that this makes Google more willing to regularly check up your website. We at VodaHost believe absolutely everyone who owns a website should use Google Webmaster Tools.
So, let’s get you set up with Google Webmaster Tools (you will need a Google Account for this; if you have a GMail account you're ready to go) and optimize your website for Google.
First, visit: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ - the home of Google Webmaster Tools.
Then, to add and verify a site:
1. Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
2. Click Add a site, and type the URL of the site you want to add. Make sure you type the entire URL, such as http://www.vodahost.com/
3. Click Continue. The Site verification page opens.
4. In the Name box, type a name for your site (for example, My Web Hosting Page). (This step is optional)
5. Select the verification method you want, and follow the instructions.
Once you've verified your website, go back to the home page and click on your website domain name to get to the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard. On the main page you'll be presented with several main areas and loads of extremely useful information to help you out:
I. Top Search Queries
When people searched on Google, how did they find your website? Generally speaking, as you look over these keyword phrases, they should be in line with what your website is about (its overall topic) and current search engine rankings. What's very important is that the phrases that are here are related to your website and that there aren't any weird or unrelated keyword phrases showing up. If you do see some strange phrases, you might investigate them further to see if there are issues with your website, your website's inbound links, or if that keyword phrase appears somewhere on your website or not.
If you dig deeper into the Top Search Queries area, you'll see that there are two different sections: Impressions and Clickthroughs. Ideally, these should be very close (what's shown on the left side is also shown on the right side). There may be keyword phrases that you're site is being located with, but people aren't clicking through to it. By comparing these two lists, you can make changes to your pages so that they are more likely to get clicked. For some reason, users may search for a keyword phrase and they may not be clicking through to your website. If you can figure out why they're not clicking through, you may be able to fix it to attract more visitors, and bring in more sales.
II. Links to your site
Remember, a golden rule of SEO states that the more quality links to your site from outside, the better as a main emphasis of Google's search algorithm is the number and quality links from other websites to your website. Google publicly won't tell your competitors which other websites link to you but, they will tell you the links if you're the website owner; this is why you had to verify your site. This is very helpful, especially to see how you're doing overall, and to verify that your website is getting new links--Google will give you the date that they found the link to your website. You can export all of the links to a Microsoft Excel file if you wish, and then you can sort them by date, for example. We recommend that you look at the links to your website on a very regular basis, if possible. They are of great importance.
III. Crawl errors
Ideally, when Google crawls your website (when it sends its search engine spider, the Googlebot, to have a look at the web pages on your website and report back) there should be no errors whatsoever. If there are errors, they'll be reported here. If your website is unreachable (say, that pesky 404 Not Found error) then it will report those errors here. If you're having issues with a lack of sales, for example, you might have look to see if there are any errors being reported and if any of your web-pages are not available to the Googlebot and to your visitors.
IV. Sitemaps
A Sitemap is a listing of all of the web pages on your website and providing the search engines a sitemap may be very helpful to your website. It won't help you rank better, but it will give the search engines a list of pages to crawl and look at. You should know how many web pages (and how many products) you have. If there is a big difference in the number of pages that you know you have on your website and the number that's reported in this section, there may be a problem. If that's the case, then you might want to investigate further to make sure that all of the products that you're selling, or all the web-pages you are hosting, are included.
You should check how Google "sees" your site regularly, certainly every time you make big revisions to your site and most importantly you should pay attention to what it tells you. If it tells you that your primary keywords are not yielding any visitors, then you should change them. If you find that there are links on your page that do not work you can correct them immediately without having to check that every single link on your site works yourself. You may also have an agreement with other sites that they will link to your website. You should check to see what links you have and make sure that in general these links are increasing in number. Google Webmaster Tools is very helpful for any website owner. The tools can be used to diagnose your sites problems, and to help improve its performance in many ways. You don't have review the information daily but VodaHost suggests you take a look at least once a month if you were confident that everything's going smoothly with your online sales. However, if there is an issue (say if you notice a drop in sales), you might want to take a look at Google Webmaster Tools to help you identify the problem.
Google Webmaster Tools gives you tons of information about your website and how to give it the best search engine exposure it can possibly get. It is a fantastically powerful collection of free, online tools to let you find out by what searches internet users worldwide are finding your site and how Google itself sees your site and places it within its search results. It lets you see whether there are any problems with your site that is stopping Google from reaching certain parts of it and lets you see which other internet sites have links which are pointing to it (which is very important for SEO). You can even submit a sitemap to Google using these tools and many believe that this makes Google more willing to regularly check up your website. We at VodaHost believe absolutely everyone who owns a website should use Google Webmaster Tools.
So, let’s get you set up with Google Webmaster Tools (you will need a Google Account for this; if you have a GMail account you're ready to go) and optimize your website for Google.
First, visit: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ - the home of Google Webmaster Tools.
Then, to add and verify a site:
1. Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
2. Click Add a site, and type the URL of the site you want to add. Make sure you type the entire URL, such as http://www.vodahost.com/
3. Click Continue. The Site verification page opens.
4. In the Name box, type a name for your site (for example, My Web Hosting Page). (This step is optional)
5. Select the verification method you want, and follow the instructions.
Once you've verified your website, go back to the home page and click on your website domain name to get to the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard. On the main page you'll be presented with several main areas and loads of extremely useful information to help you out:
I. Top Search Queries
When people searched on Google, how did they find your website? Generally speaking, as you look over these keyword phrases, they should be in line with what your website is about (its overall topic) and current search engine rankings. What's very important is that the phrases that are here are related to your website and that there aren't any weird or unrelated keyword phrases showing up. If you do see some strange phrases, you might investigate them further to see if there are issues with your website, your website's inbound links, or if that keyword phrase appears somewhere on your website or not.
If you dig deeper into the Top Search Queries area, you'll see that there are two different sections: Impressions and Clickthroughs. Ideally, these should be very close (what's shown on the left side is also shown on the right side). There may be keyword phrases that you're site is being located with, but people aren't clicking through to it. By comparing these two lists, you can make changes to your pages so that they are more likely to get clicked. For some reason, users may search for a keyword phrase and they may not be clicking through to your website. If you can figure out why they're not clicking through, you may be able to fix it to attract more visitors, and bring in more sales.
II. Links to your site
Remember, a golden rule of SEO states that the more quality links to your site from outside, the better as a main emphasis of Google's search algorithm is the number and quality links from other websites to your website. Google publicly won't tell your competitors which other websites link to you but, they will tell you the links if you're the website owner; this is why you had to verify your site. This is very helpful, especially to see how you're doing overall, and to verify that your website is getting new links--Google will give you the date that they found the link to your website. You can export all of the links to a Microsoft Excel file if you wish, and then you can sort them by date, for example. We recommend that you look at the links to your website on a very regular basis, if possible. They are of great importance.
III. Crawl errors
Ideally, when Google crawls your website (when it sends its search engine spider, the Googlebot, to have a look at the web pages on your website and report back) there should be no errors whatsoever. If there are errors, they'll be reported here. If your website is unreachable (say, that pesky 404 Not Found error) then it will report those errors here. If you're having issues with a lack of sales, for example, you might have look to see if there are any errors being reported and if any of your web-pages are not available to the Googlebot and to your visitors.
IV. Sitemaps
A Sitemap is a listing of all of the web pages on your website and providing the search engines a sitemap may be very helpful to your website. It won't help you rank better, but it will give the search engines a list of pages to crawl and look at. You should know how many web pages (and how many products) you have. If there is a big difference in the number of pages that you know you have on your website and the number that's reported in this section, there may be a problem. If that's the case, then you might want to investigate further to make sure that all of the products that you're selling, or all the web-pages you are hosting, are included.
You should check how Google "sees" your site regularly, certainly every time you make big revisions to your site and most importantly you should pay attention to what it tells you. If it tells you that your primary keywords are not yielding any visitors, then you should change them. If you find that there are links on your page that do not work you can correct them immediately without having to check that every single link on your site works yourself. You may also have an agreement with other sites that they will link to your website. You should check to see what links you have and make sure that in general these links are increasing in number. Google Webmaster Tools is very helpful for any website owner. The tools can be used to diagnose your sites problems, and to help improve its performance in many ways. You don't have review the information daily but VodaHost suggests you take a look at least once a month if you were confident that everything's going smoothly with your online sales. However, if there is an issue (say if you notice a drop in sales), you might want to take a look at Google Webmaster Tools to help you identify the problem.
