Google Webmaster Tools is a free application to help you better manage your digital business. A tool that can help you identify issues with your website and let you know if it’s not functioning correctly. Let’s face it – if your website isn’t up to par, then no one is going to visit it. No visitors means no sales.
Google Webmaster Tools is a part of the answer. This powerful application from Google is the ally you didn’t know you needed. It can provide you with information about your business that you never knew existed.
Get Valuable Information
If you aren’t using Webmaster Tools, you could be missing out on valuable information about your website. For example, Google will notify you if they detect an unnatural link. In layman’s terms there may be a deceptive or manipulative outbound link that shouldn’t be there. Without receiving that notification, what are the chances you’d find out about an issue like that?
Instead of going into site management blindly, let the experts help you.
Google Webmaster Tools Account
The account is free, and once you register, the first thing you will be asked to do is add your website. Keep in mind that you can’t add a website unless you own it. If you hired a web designer, be sure the site is registered to you. Nine times out of ten, if your contract doesn’t explicitly say that you own the site, then you don’t.
You can verify ownership in several different ways:
Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration – You can use this option if you can sign in to your domain registrar or hosting provider and add a new DNS record.
Add a meta tag to your site’s homepage – You can choose this option if you can edit your site’s HTML.
Upload an HTML file to your server – You can choose this option if you can upload new files to your site.
Link your Google Analytics account to GWT – You can use this option if your site already has a Google Analytics tracking code that uses the asynchronous snippet. You must be an administrator on the analytics account for this to work.
Configure Your Site
Google is pretty good at what they do, but even they need some help on occasion. Configuring your site can help them do a better job of ranking it. Some of the ways you can do this include submitting a sitemap, remove site links, or changing your settings to include a preferred domain name or set a target audience.
Check Your Dashboard
The dashboard is where you can see all the information about your business that you’ll ever need. The Dashboard will give you a rough overview of everything from keyword ranking to crawl errors. Keep in mind that this page is just basic information. If you want more in-depth analytics, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Run Diagnostics
One of the best things about GWT is its ability to tell you when things aren’t running smoothly. Through the diagnostics section, you can quickly identify a variety of issues, from bad code, to load time, to malware infection.
So what are you waiting for? If you want to improve your search rankings and your website traffic, Google Webmaster Tools is your one-stop shop for getting there. We, at Blue Zenith, are happy to help review your site to help you attain the ranking level you would like to achieve. We can help you get started.