Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) offers a free suite of tools designed to assist website owners and webmasters in managing their site effectively. GWT gives website owners and webmasters insight into what Google sees about their site so that changes can be made to further optimize it.
Discover if your website has been penalised and take the necessary steps to recover from it. In addition, use it to submit your sitemap and obtain information on links.
1. Sitemaps
Sitemaps provide search engines with an index for crawling and indexing the URLs on a website, making their job of indexing pages much simpler.
Google benefits greatly from receiving sitemaps as they allow it to quickly discover any new or updated pages on your website more quickly, while giving it an idea of how it is structured.
Submitting a sitemap does not ensure your pages will be indexed. Search engines could still decide to ignore or penalize them depending on how low-quality they are.
At times, it may be beneficial to omit certain pages from your sitemap – like login pages or pages you don’t want appearing in search results – to send a clearer signal to search engines and potentially avoid unwanted pages appearing in results. Yoast provides tools that make this easier.
2. Crawl errors
Crawl errors are records of issues encountered while Google crawling your website, often detected using Google Search Console (GSC) or additional SEO tools, and should be monitored regularly in order to achieve maximum site performance.
Crawler errors are similar to 404 and access denied errors, but can be more specific. For instance, Google might return a 5xx error if it comes across a page requiring login authentication, too many URL parameters or other coding issues that cause duplicate content issues or indexing issues.
Your site needs to be optimized for SEO as soon as possible, and Google Web Testing Tools’ Fetch and Render tool is an invaluable resource to see what Google crawls and renders for each page on your site. This tool can also serve as an excellent diagnostic tool when working with complex websites or when issues arise following code pushes.
3. Search queries
Search queries are the words or phrases users enter into search engines in order to obtain specific results. Search queries play an integral part of digital search experiences and are also essential components of SEO and digital marketing strategies. Understanding search queries allows us to tailor websites and content in response to user intent – thus increasing visibility and relevance on search engines.
Search query types can range from transactional (like “buy Samsung Galaxy S3”) to navigational (“how to make iced coffee”). The latter type often features brand and product names as a telltale sign that a user is nearing the business end of conversion funnel.
Informational searches are another popular form of searches. Such queries tend to be fairly broad and could involve various variations such as “skinny jeans,” “womens skinny jeans,” or even “skinny jeans size 0.” As such, these queries can be difficult to target with AdWords since broad match tends to return many irrelevant results. Go Here allows you to gain knowledge about Webmaster Tools faster.
4. Links to your site
Webmaster Tools is an invaluable asset in SEO as it offers direct information from Google about how a website is performing and what can be done to enhance it. Digital marketers and website owners alike can use Webmaster Tools as a valuable resource in SEO to understand how their site is faring and how best they can improve it.
As an example, in the ‘Queries’ section you can identify which search queries people use to find your website and pages. This is useful in terms of making sure your content reflects keywords you wish to rank for and that each page remains distinct and pertinent. Likewise, if traffic drops significantly on your website this data can help identify why; whether due to poor quality content or changes to Google search algorithms.
Finally, the ‘Links to your Site’ section allows you to see which websites are linking back to yours – an essential piece of the Google algorithm which serves as an indication that it contains quality content.
