Webmaster Tools (also known as Search Console) from Google is relied upon by millions of webmasters and digital marketers worldwide. Once verified as the owner of your website, accessing Webmaster Tools provides access to a host of information that assists SEO efforts and can provide invaluable insight.
Search Queries provides a valuable glimpse into what queries are driving traffic to your website.
Sitemaps
Sitemaps serve as roadmaps for search engines, providing an outline of pages and content on a website in order to assist them in indexing. They can either be in XML or HTML formats and act like a blueprint of its structure containing accurate page links and metadata.
Google Webmaster Tools makes sure they know all the URLs on your website by using sitemaps, and this ensures they discover any new pages as soon as they appear, unlike their algorithmic search algorithms which only check in every few weeks or so.
Search Analytics provides an effective way of tracking performance of keyword queries that led to pages appearing in search results. Line graphs give insights into how each keyword is performing with metrics such as impressions, clicks and average position – try fiddling around with all of its radio button options for maximum effectiveness!
Sitelinks
Sitelinks are additional links that appear below a search result on Google’s SERP, providing users with easy access to key pages such as product, about us or contact info pages.
They’re often created specifically for branded searches in order to improve user experience and increase brand recognition.
Structure, content and user behavior all play a part in whether or not a website qualifies for sitelinks. An organized website with clear categories and hierarchies helps Google understand which pages are most important and their relevance to a query query. Reputable and authoritative websites tend to receive more sitelink consideration than newer ones.
Although you cannot control whether or not your website qualifies for sitelinks, there are certain practices you can implement to increase its chances of receiving them. Fetch as Google and ensuring all pages contain effective titles can help improve this chance – since page titles are one of the most powerful SEO elements.
Crawl Errors
Search Queries in Webmaster Tools allows you to see Google searches that led to at least one page on your website. Google used to round off this data in order to estimate impressions; now however, they show all clicks directly in their report.
It’s essential that you monitor any issues that prevent bots from reaching a webpage on your website, such as soft 404s, not found errors and blocked URLs – these errors could have an adverse effect on SEO performance and should be monitored.
Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs and Screaming Frog can help you identify crawl errors you may not have noticed previously. By keeping an eye on these tools and performing regular site audits with them or other tools can help detect issues before they impact visibility and can then be addressed accordingly. To understand the importance of SEO further, check out our blog post entitled Why You Need to Focus on SEO. By browse around this site, you can quickly learn about Webmaster Tools.
Indexing
Google Webmaster Tools provide invaluable tools and functionalities that are invaluable to marketing professionals, SEO specialists, business owners, website developers and web admins alike. Their insights allow for optimization of performance, indexing status and overall visibility – invaluable assets in optimizing a website’s success and overall visibility.
Webmaster Tools not only tracks search queries, but it can also assist with adding rich snippets to search engine results pages (SERPs). This can add great value to your brand website and boost conversions.
GWT can also provide many other helpful insights, including click-through rate (CTR) data that will give you a good indication of which keywords are driving visitors to your website and help refocus keyword research and SEO efforts.
Search Analytics also displays data regarding search queries that lead to non-HTML pages such as PDFs or downloads, though only for 90 days back (here are some ways you can automate search query downloads).
