Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools Introduction

In our Google Webmaster Tools Tutorial we will introduce the included services, give hints on how to use them,and explain how to create a Google Webmaster Tools account.

Google Webmaster Tools provides the following very useful services for your website:

• Submit/check the sitemap for your website.
• Adjust the crawl rate of the Google bots for your website and view the statistics.
• Generate/check the robots.txt file for your website.
• List the internal and external pages that link to your website.
• Check what keyword searches led the site to being displayed in the Google search engine results pages and click-through rates for them.
• Check statistics about how Google has indexed your website and whether it has found any issues while doing so.
• Set a preferred domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com over www.yourdomain.com or vice versa) which will determine how the site URL will be displayed in search engine results pages.

Google Webmaster Tools is a very popular solution for your website and it is highly recomended by webmasters. It will help you with the Search Engine Ranking Optimization of your website. You will be able to use it for a frequent analysis and for checking the statistics of your website. It  gives you precise information how your website is indexed by Google and provides you with deep insights in case of an issue.

In order to use the Google Webmaster Tools for your website you need to confirm that you are the owner of the website and have full access to it. The process is absolutely automated and all you need to do is place a given text file in the webroot directory for your website.

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to submit an XML sitemap for your website. Thus providing information about all pages on the website and making it easier and faster for Google bots to crawl and index it. You will also see more detailed information related to the indexing of your website.

Google Webmaster Tools provide a full list of the search phrases that result in your web site being displayed on the search engine results pages. You will also receive full information about all internal and external links to your website, keywords, errors and missing pages. Such information is of utter importance when you want to better optimize your website and have it displayed higher in the search engine results.

In order to start using Google Webmaster Tools, you should create a new account (or use an existing one if you already have a Google account). Visit the Google Webmaster Tools web page:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

You will be asked to log in or create a new account. The registration process is simple and you should not experience any troubles.

Once logged in with your Google account to the Google Webmaster Tools interface you should start by adding your website. To do so click on the Add a Site button. A pop-up will appear and you will be prompted to enter your website domain name. Once you have done it you will see your newly-added website under the sites menu.

The next step is to verify you are the owner of the website. For this purpose click the Verify this site link. The easiest way to verify the website is by uploading an HTML file. Choose this option from the Verification Method drop-down menu and follow the verification steps:

1. Click the Download verification file link and save the file to your local computer.
2. Connect to your hosting account via an FTP Client or using cPanel -> File manager and upload the downloaded file under the webroot directory (most commonly public_html) for your domain name.
3. Verify that the file is successfully uploaded by visiting the proposed link.
4. Finally click the verify button.

At this point you will be redirected to the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard for the website you have just verified.