Take Control over Your Website with Google Webmaster Tools
If you own a website, taking the help of Google Webmaster Tools should be a no brainer. It is a free tool that provides detailed reports on your pages’ visibility in Google. Similar tools for other search engines including Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center can be implemented to extend website monitoring abilities.
To get started, you need to add your website and verify that you have an authorized access to it. Once this is done, you can review your website considering three aspects – site configuration, your site on the web, and diagnostics. Site configuration provides a better way of managing the site, your site on the web shows how Google finds you and diagnosis helps you identify errors. We’ve listed a few ways you can use Google Webmaster Tools to increase traffic generated through search engines:
Geographic Targeting:
You can target where your content appears by making modifications in the settings option in site configuration. However, you must only do this if you want the content to appear in a specified country. This option is generally used when an individual or a company owns multiple websites that are targeting customers in different countries.
Add a sitemap:
This sitemap is different from the public sitemap you use to facilitate content navigation on your website. It is dynamically built sitemap that updates regularly with current pages as and when they are created. To add a sitemap, you can either take the help of your webmaster or simply prepare it yourself by using a free .xml sitemap generator tool. You can check whether you already have an existing sitemap at Domain.com. Submitting a site through web master tool pokes Google to crawl your recent content.
Diagnose underlying issues:
Crawl errors and stats help you diagnose potential issues and provide information to troubleshoot them. This enables improved site performance. If errors are detected, crawl errors and stats will provide suggestions on taking the next move. In addition, it will show the time it takes for loading the page. Large sites that use rich content such as slide shows, videos and images extensively can benefit greatly through this feature by knowing if their site loads slowly. Crawlers will go through more content if your site loads quickly.
Taking the help of Google Webmaster Tools makes sense as it provides a broader picture through better website monitoring. At Softweb Solutions, we deliver SEO services to help you get found easily through search engines. If you need help or would like to share your opinions, please post them in the comments section below.
