DW Tips

Google Webmaster Tools is a free suite of tools run by Google which are designed to help you find out more about your website. It’s basically an opportunity to see your website the way Google sees it, including data about your website, your visitors and how they found your site. In fact, it's impossible to do any meaningful search engine optimisation (SEO) without it. 

The information assembled for you can help you fine tune your website to improve conversions or your visitor’s experience. With so many options, it is perhaps best to summarize the top features which help a typical website.

Search Queries

One of the most valuable pieces of information you can gather from Google is the search query visitors actually typed into the Google search engine, to get to your site. You can also see the landing page to which Google directed them. Armed with this knowledge, you can optimize your landing pages so that they more closely match the query. By doing so you can reduce bounce rates and increase average visit times; you will probably be surprised not only by the search queries typed in by visitors, but also by the popularity of specific pages of your site.

Diagnostic Data 

Google also provides a plethora of data regarding your overall site condition, such as broken links, crawl errors. You may not even be aware that a page link was broken but by addressing these issues your Google search results will improve, not to mention your visitor’s experience.

Analytics Data

Technically most analytics data can be found by installing and running Google Analytics on your site. However, Google Webmaster Tools does provide some analytic data including number of visitors to specific pages, number of search queries and overall search volume by date. Granted, this is fairly basic data, but it’s free and the integrity of the data is as good as it gets since it comes directly from Google.

Incoming Links

Do you know how many sites link to your website? To what pages do they link? Are these sites desirable or are they doing more harm than good? Google Webmaster Tools provides data to answer these critical questions. But even more important it provides you with tools to disavow links to your site if you so desire.

Site Maps

A site map is exactly what it sounds like, it is a map of your site to help Google’s crawl efforts to deliver optimal search results. Google will crawl your site, whether you have a site map or not. However by creating and submitting your own site map you can tell Google which pages you may not want crawled, such as obsolete product pages, outdated price lists or perhaps a part of your site which is paid access only. A site map will basically help you exclude pages from showing up on search results while helping Google clearly see links between pages on your site.

While the data provided by Google is invaluable to optimize any type of website, it can also be overwhelming. Making site decisions based on this data may be more complex than it initially appears. It is best to analyze any changes you plan to make and to clearly understand the impact to the entire website.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions and we'd be more than happy to help you register your website with Google Webmaster Tools and get you started.