Webmaster Tools
If you are an ardent blogger or webmaster mindful of your pages’ visibility on Google, then you surely must have heard about Google Webmaster Tools. If you are yet to use these tools in your online endeavours then you are missing out on a lot of information. Google Webmaster tools provide detailed reports about the performance of your pages and their visibility on Google. The fact that these tools are so effective and come free of charge has made them must haves for every blogger. You however need to know how to effectively use these tools if you are to get the most out of them.
There is no better way of finding out about the use of these tools than talking to a SEO expert and Google Partner who has been using these tools for close to ten years now. We talked to the expert that is Tony Guo and came up with the following list of ways to use Webmaster tool to better your online presence. Here are 14 tips on how to use Google Webmaster Tools as provided by Tony Guo;
1. HTML Improvements
HTML improvements refers to tips that Google offers you about the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that will best help you in optimizing the search for your site. Google does this by mainly changing the Meta descriptions, correcting missing title tags, duplicating title tags, truncating or replacing long title tags, notifying you if your title tags are non-informative and many other measures you may take to improve your Google rank. Use the webmaster tools to improve your HTML.
2. Crawl rate
Through Google Webmaster Tools, you can adjust the rate at which Google crawls your website. You will more often than not want Google to increase its crawl rate because this affects your ranking. Google crawl rate may diminish over time and it is therefore important that you check and adjust the crawl rate appropriately. Webmaster tools come in handy as far as checking the crawl rate is concerned.
3. Structure your data
Structuring your data using schema mark-up or other data structures can actually help you to drastically improve your Google search ranking. Statistics show that only a small percentage of websites use schema. These few websites that use it averagely rank four positions higher than those that don’t. It is therefore a no-brainer that using a structured data highlighter is important for your website.
4. Author Stats
The importance of the author stat feature is often underestimated as a GWT feature. The main reason for this is because the feature is in beta hence easily overlooked. Using the author stats feature helps you monitor your website stats as content producers. Knowledge of this data can help you better your personal brand. This feature can be found by clicking the ‘labs’ section of the GWT.
5. Site-link Ordering
This are extra listings which Google makes under the main website. Although you have no power to control how the site-links Google shows, you can make sure that your site structure is clear-cut to improve site-link generation.
6. Internally linked pages
Identifying internal linking on your website helps you improve your site’s SEO. The Google Webster ‘internal links’ tool aids you in identifying the pages within your website that are most often linked. The more the pages are internally linked, the better your pages are.
7. Indexation Status
It is important to keep an eye on your indexation status. This is because the number of indexed pages tend to change over certain periods of time. Drastic changes to the indexation status may cause an algorithmic shift which impacts your website’s ranking. It is also important to note that a fall in indexation may affect SEO of your site. Ideally, an increase in the number of indexed pages should result in increase in your marketing output, ensuring the indexed pages number remains high.
8. Fetch as Google
The ‘Fetch at Google’ tool is important in analysing pages in correlation to SEO. This GWT feature allows you to know the probability of appearance of a page, assists you in knowing the HTTP server response and a page’s screenshot from Google.
9. Searching and detecting Malware
Cyber-attacks are continually being prevalent in today’s world. It is therefore vital that you protect your website from spams and malware. Google strives to correct this issues by having security measures embodied in GWT. Detect such bots and plug-ins in your website that may be affecting your performance.
10. Keywords
Knowledge of content keywords is very important in increasing traffic to your website. There are certain keywords which Google favours above other. Top keywords can be accessed in the Google Webmaster Tools. The Webmaster tools will help you know the relevancy and quality of certain keywords and those that promise to have a good click-through rate when incorporated in your online endeavours.
