You Should Be Using Webmaster Tools.

by Dan Korvas
Search Engine Specialist

When it comes to online marketing, there are basic components that need to be implemented to see any results. You need to come up with proper keywords to target. You need to create search engine friendly content. You need to create proper titles for each page that are relevant to what you are targeting. You need to link build. You need to have unique, non-duplicate content. Actually, there are many other functions you need to perform in order to increase your visibility on the search engines. But there is an overlooked piece of the puzzle, which is verifying that your website it being properly indexed by the search engines.

Enter Webmaster Tools. The major search engines have their own version of this toolset and they give us yet one more piece of ammunition to determine how your site is being viewed by that respective search engine. For this instance, we will refer to Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is a simple yet effective dashboard to view several aspects of how your site is being indexed by Google. In order to add your site to GWT, you must first have a registered Google Account. After you take care of that, you can now login to GWT and register your site. The next step is to add the URL that you have control of, which means that you must have the ability to add either an .html file OR add a line of code to the <meta> area of your index page. This measure is put in place for two purposes: (1) to verify that you have unique control of this website and (2) to provide you with data about how your website is viewed and crawled by Google.

Once you have performed these steps, the next major function is to add an .xml sitemap. Basically, we create and submit XML sitemaps to ensure that all pages of a website are being crawled by the search engines. Don't know how to create an XML sitemap? There are free sitemap generators available on the internet, but these sites only allow you to create a file that is limited to 500 pages"¦so if your site is larger than 500, you will have to pay (or learn how to make one yourself!).

Now that the sitemap is in created and uploaded to your website, you can now add this sitemap to GWT. Typically, it will take Google a few hours to propagate the sitemap and begin collecting data. From there, you will now be able to view how Google is crawling your site and it gives you an insight as to what pages might not be indexed for any host of reasons.

There are other data points that you can now view. For instance, you can check what Google would consider as your sitelinks, which as the additional links that Google provides for a relevant search query. There is a great deal of additional information that can be gathered by simply using GWT for your website, and it will help you to ensure that you are conforming to what the search engines want to see when it comes to adding you to the index.