What is Google Webmaster Tools

Do you use Google webmaster tools to help you solve problems with your site? Maybe you use webmaster tools to improve your Search engine optimization in Googles index.

If you’re not getting enough traffic from the search engines or having problems with your site, webmaster tools will show you what the problems are and how to fix them.

Firstly, Check out this intro video about Google Webmaster Tools for beginners

What is Google Webmaster Tools?

The worlds most popular search engine, Google, also offers free tools to help webmasters improve the visibility of their websites & blogs on the internet and in the search results.

Google Webmaster tools will help you discover:

• Which websites & blogs link to your site and what anchor text they use in the links
• What keywords your site visitors type into the Google search box to arrive at your site
• Which of your web pages Google includes in their search results
• Diagnose & display which web pages are producing 404 page not found crawl errors

Access more webmaster tools and useful information for problem solving, check out the webmaster help centre.

Lets now take a look at what features you get access to after you sign up for a free account with Google webmaster tools.

Add & Verify Your Site Url

Here you’ll find information on what sites you have added to web master tools and the verification process.

If you haven’t already verified your site, click the add a site button and enter the URL of a site you’d like to manage.

Once you’ve added your sites url, you’ll need to verify you own the domain.

There’s 4 ways to do this. If you already have already setup a  Google analytics account, you can verify ownership using this account.

• Upload a html file to your public html on your web server using cPanel or FTP
• Copy and paste the meta tag code supplied by webmaster tools into your home page

Webmaster Tools Dashboard

Once you’ve verified your site, you’ll get free access to range of tools and useful information which helps you fix problems and improve your sites visiblity in Google’s search engine results index.

Your webmaster tools dashboard displays information & stats about:

• Search queries – The keywords typed into the Google search box, clicks, ctr, average position  and change in keyword position.
• Crawl errors – Broken links & crawl errors in sitemaps, 404 page not found errors and other errors with your sites links.
• Links to your site – List of domains which link to your site, number of links from each domain, most linked content & total number of links.
• Keywords – A list of the most common keywords Google found when crawling your site. These should reflect the subject matter of your site
• Sitemaps – Install a sitemap plugin and submit the url of your content to Google. This will show the number of your site url’s in Google index.

You’ll discover more features and helpful information which you can use to improve your sites position in Google’s index by exploring all the links in your dashboard.

If you’re already a user of webmaster tools, do you have any tips or tricks you care to share with us?