Google’s Webmaster Tools – a hidden pot of gold

I’m going to start my first post by writing about one of the most fundamental tools to the success of any website – Google Webmaster Tools – and every webmaster should use it. Here at Webexpectations.com we call it Google’s hidden pot of gold.

But what does Google Webmaster Tools actually do?

• Lets you see how Google views your site and allows you to diagnose problems
• Lets you discover link and query traffic with a range of reporting tools
• Lets you control and share information about your site directly with Google

I bet I can find one statistic in Webmaster Tools that is either damaging your website or is limiting your website’s visibility

It is essential to get Google’s view of your site and diagnose problems. Are you aware that the newly- released content analysis tools can even help drive traffic to your site? We’ve recently made use of this new tool on a client’s website to improve traffic by 69.87% – enough to require the client to upgrade servers!

Did You Know?

Duplicate and invalid title/meta data can cause serious damage to your website.

Google’s Webmaster Tools give you (for free) all the tools and diagnostics you will ever need to know about anything on your website. Webmaster Tools allows you to discover link and query traffic, and provides various reporting including visibility reports. We all know linking schemes aid in organic search results. Google’s Webmaster Tools allows you to identify positive linking and even linking which can cause penalization of a website – affecting your visibility, traffic and potential profit.

Success online is about maximising your visibility and calls-to-action

Exposure! Exposure! Exposure! You need to get your content out there, otherwise how is your site going to get traffic and, ultimately, conversions? Google’s Webmaster Tools allows you to provide a specially-crafted XML sitemap which Google crawls to ensure that all pages you serve to the public are indexed. If your content is still not being indexed or found by Google, then perhaps your robots.txt file is blocking key landing pages. Google Webmaster Tools has a built-in spider simulator which will test the robots.txt file you have to ensure you are not blocking fundamental pages.

At webexpectations.com, we understand that search engine optimisation is not the only answer to an enquiry-driven website. We put every site through fundamental tests and checks, all of which are available in Webmaster Tools, to ensure the websites we design and develop deliver quality, targeted enquiries.

Webmaster Tools is often something that is overshadowed by other Google services including Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Google Website Optimiser. You can, however, debate that Google Webmaster Tools is the most fundamental service of them all.