Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tool is absolutely free tool provided by Google and it is also a good mechanism for communicating with Google. Google webmaster Tool helps us to identify the problems related to our site. This guide to webmaster tools will walk through the features of webmaster tools and how those features help us. Here an overview about how to use Google Webmaster Tools to improve SEO.
Messages
Google sends an email to webmaster when there is an issue related to our site. If don’t see the message from Goggle, you could miss an important piece of information. We have to improve our site performance by using some tips.
- Add all your website versions
- Select your preferred version
- Select target country
- Share access with co-workers
- Submit a sitemap file
- Learn how to work with Search Console
Search Appearance
It is the search appearance of search results when searchers search something. Mainly 4 search appearance in Google webmaster tools.
- Structured Data
- Data Highlighter
- HTML Improvements
- Sitemaps
Structured Data
Data is a combination of unstructured data, Semi structured data, structured data. We must ensure that the sites are visible and understandable by search engines with relevant and rich data. Rich Snippet, authorship Optimization are structured data. The searchers can easily asses and quickly understandable when adding rich snippets with content also the users get the value of site before clicking the site. So we can improve our CTR by adding rich snippet and authorship optimization.
Data Highlighter
Data Highlighter help Google to identify the structured data on page without need of code. We can add Data highlighter to our website. By adding data highlighter the search users can view the needed things on search results and they got idea about the thing. Events, Restaurants, movie, product etc these are webmaster tools includes the types of data highlighter.
HTML Improvements
Google Webmaster Tool informs you any issues related to our webpage’s HTML tags. That means any error occurring in the title tag or Meta description Google informs you. A website contains so many pages and that should have a unique title tag and Meta description. If any issues there the Google gives you the detailed error message and we can correct it. Google typically displays the title tag 50-60 and Meta description 155-160.
Sitelinks
Sitelinks are the links that may be shown under the domain name of the site in Google search results. These links are determined by Google based on how much authority got to the particular query. Every site owner needs good sitelinks. Through sitelinks the users quickly and easily find what they are looking for. The users can save their time by using sitelinks. Webmaster tools allow site owner to demote sitelinks. That means we do not want to show one of the sitelink for some reason.
Demote a sitelink URL:
- On the Search Console Home page, click the site you want.
- Under Search Appearance, click Sitelinks.
- In the For this search result box, complete the URL for which you don’t want a specific sitelink URL to appear.
- In the Demote this sitelink URLbox, complete the URL of the sitelink you want to demote.
Search Traffic
Search traffic means it provides the information about the traffic- how the individual page in a website get search. Webmaster tool includes mainly 6 types of search traffic.
- Search Analytics
- Links to Your Site
- Internal Links
- Manual Actions
- International Targeting
- Mobile Usability
Search Analytics
Search Analytics analyze your site performance and improvements on Google search results. It also gives the report of how your site appear in search results. Filter and group data by categories such as queries, pages, countries, date, device, search type. Webmaster tools provides some metrics- clicks, impressions, CTR, position.
Links to Your Site
The best way to improve the sites rank by gets more sites to link to your website. We can monitor the site growth through the Google Webmaster Tools. When we got a link from a bad website it will hurt you. Webmaster tools give the report of who links the most, your most linked content, how your data is linked.
Internal Links
Internal link means connecting or linking your Webpages together brings your website in a higher position also may improve the authority in the eyes of Google. Good internal links good for Google page ranking and it really helps the Google to find pages. But beware that don’t want to overdo it.
Manual Actions
It is the communication area of Google to users. Google will inform you any site-wide manual penalties that you have applied to your site.
International Targeting
Targeting the search results mainly in international. Webmaster tools use 2 methods for international targeting. First one is target the search results to specific country. Second one is language targeting. Language section helps you ensure your hreflang tags use the correct locale codes (language and optional country). More commonly, you can make sure that alternate pages have tags that link back to the pages for your site. The Country section—you can use this tool to set a site-wide country target for your entire site, if necessary.
Mobile Usability
Our site optimized for mobile. Because nowadays everyone needs mobile phones and they access internet in phone than laptops. So the search results in google also visible in mobile phone users also.
Google Index
Google index obviously gives the information about how your website indexed in Google. Webmaster tools provide 4 types of Google index.
Index Status
Index status show how many pages are indexed in Google. It allows tracking the status of your site within the Google index.
Content Keywords
Content Keywords give the report of most frequently used keywords used on the website.
Blocked Resources
This report shows the blocked URLs by robots.txt.
Removed URLs
Google has removal URL tool that allows requesting that the URL be taken out the index. Only the site owners and users will have the full permission for requesting URL Removal.
Crawl
Crawl Errors
Crawl error feature in the webmaster tools gives the report if any problem related to your website on the web or mobile phone. The most common error seen in webpage is 404 error, which means can’t find the page by Google bots.
Crawl Stats
If we have thousands of pages in our website then we might expect crawl that most of the pages on a day or weekly. Google webmaster tool provide a feature crawl stats for showing the page crawl per day, Kilobytes downloaded per day and time spend downloading a page.
Fetch as Google
The Fetch as Google tool enables you to test how Google crawls or renders a URL on your site. Fetches a specified URL in your site and displays the HTTP response. The fetch as Google tool allows retrieving a page of your website if you are in Google.
Robots.txt Tester
Robots.txt file is a file at the root of your site for blocking Google from crawling some pages.
Sitemaps
Sitemap is informative document based on your site. It is a quick area for communication to Google. If you don’t submit a sitemap they may not index all pages in website. That means you won’t get much more traffic. Sitemap submitted in XML format. They can’t contain more than 50,000 URLs. If more than 50,000 URLs in sitemap we need to split the sitemap to multiple files.
URL Parameter
It helps Google crawl your site more efficiently by indicating how we should handle parameters in your URLs. This tools to give Google information about how to handle URLs containing specific parameters.
Security Issues
If Google has detected any malware or other security issues on your site, this is where they’ll list it out.
Malware
If you have malware on your server, you should see a message here. When someone injects code into your forum or comments area that is an issue. Google will see this and deem it malware.
Other Resources
This section contains links to tools that are outside of Google Webmaster Tool, but are of interest to webmasters, such as the Structured Data Testing tool, which enables webmasters to test their schema implementations.