Why You Need To Use Google Webmaster Tools

Written by Rick Carbone Sunday, 15 May 2011 09:05

Over the years I've written a number of articles and posts about Google Analytics and how I have benefited from them. One of the key resources is Google Webmaster Tools. If you aren't using them I put together a simple list of reasons of why they are so important to use for small and home based businesses.

Over the years I've written a number of articles and posts about Google Analytics and how I have benefited from them. One of the key resources is Google Webmaster Tools. If you aren't using them I put together a simple list of reasons of why they are so important to use for small and home based businesses.

Reason #1: Although submitting your website to Google's Webmaster Tools does not influence your ranking within Google's search results, it does however provide the information you need to get better rankings within Google and other search engines.

Reason #2: Google Webmaster Tools provides information to you regarding search terms/keywords on how people are finding your site. This alone is invaluable as it helps you to understand how content is effecting your sites performance.

Reason #3: Understand if your website has any errors within it's code that may affect your visitors ability to access your website. This is critical because if you are getting visitors to your site but they are having difficulty viewing your content you are losing potential customers.

Reason #4: When you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools you are increasing the chances that your site will be indexed faster. Once again Google does not guarantee that your site will be indexed by utilizing Webmaster Tools however it establishes a formal connection for your site and helps you to create a more SEF (Search Engine Friendly) site.

Reason#5: Find out exactly who is linking to your site. Important for SEO purposes. Also find out what all of your internal links look like to Google.

Reason #6: Google Webmaster Tools offers your site's crawl stats. With this feature you can find out how many pages Google actually indexes on your site. You can also do this quickly by going to Google and typing site:yoursitename.com this will return all of the pages Google has indexed in your site. Say for example you have 100 pages in your site and the Google stats say that there are only 75, then you can go to the pages to see if there is anything wrong with them.

Reason #7: There are numerous ways that you can get help on your site through the Google Webmaster Tools site such as a Webmaster's Help Forum, Videos on You Tube about how to use Webmaster Tools and a number of other helpful sources.

Reason #8: The best reason is that it's totally free.

Go to www.google.com/webmasters/start to sign up for your free account today