One of the most useful tools for new webmasters and people venturing into the world of SEO is a product by Google called Webmaster Tools. Although Google’s no-nonsense interface makes an effort to cut out everything unnecessary, it can sometimes be difficult for novices to jump into using the application without a little guidance. This is where we come in. Below I have outline 7 things that every person that manages a website should implement when getting set up with Webmaster Tools for the first time.
1. Verify the Site
This first task is actually easier than it looks. In order for Google to know that you actually own the site, it is required that you prove it by copying a chunk of code into the top section of your homepage’s code of the site in question. You will need (FTP) access to your site’s code in order to do this or, as an alternative, you can simply name one of the files on your site the big, long string of gibberish that Google gives you.
2. Submit a Sitemap
This is another step where you have to work with code but don’t necessarily have to know how to read it. All you need to do is submit you site to one of the many automatic sitemap generator websites and upload the XML file that they give you to where your website is hosted. After that, you will need to tell google where it is by entering the location in webmaster tools (see image).
3. Adjust Your Settings
This step will hep you let Google know how you want it to handle your site. If your site is specifically for a certain country, select one in the “Target users” area. Tell Google if you want your website displayed with or without the “www” by using the “preferred domain” feature. Lastly, if your site has a lot of pages or is new on the internet you might want to increase the crawl rate by using the slider bar provided. You will notice that if you have not verified your site by completing step 1 above, you will not be able to adjust these settings.
4. Check Your Sitelinks
If your site is already getting a fair amount of traffic, you might notice that when you search for your site online, Google will display several internal links for your site below the main one. These are called “sitelinks”. If you would like to change these you can do so by clicking on the sitelinks tab on the side of your webmaster tools account.
5. Crawl Errors
This tab will help you determine if you have accidentally removed any of your files from Google’s index. This is usually not a problem but if you have been tinkering with your robots.txt file this will help you identify any potential problems.
6. HTML Suggestions
The HTML Suggestions panel is where Google helps you identify flaws in your code that might be keeping you from appearing as high as you would like on their search results. The most common mistake that new website owners make is either forgetting to name their pages with the <title> tag or accidentally naming all of their pages the same thing. This panel will help you identify this type of problem and perform corrective actions.
Managing Webmaster Tools accounts is one of the many web design services that we perform here at Envoca. If you have still having trouble with webmaster tools after reading this guide feel free to email us with any questions that you might have.
I found this information very interesting and I am looking forward to more posts!
Some of these tools are new to me, maybe you could add them to my site for review.
Nice little list, thank you. I always wonder how much changing the settings actually helps. Mainly I change the crawl rate for larger sites or changes. Does the country really matter that much?