Google Webmaster Tools are important for one and all and it is important that you know how to make use of these tools. We are here with the Google webmaster tools guide 2018 to let you know the significant changes that have taken place and the newly introduced features. This will help you to enhance ranking of your website in search engines while monitoring any possible issues on frequent basis.
Set the website with webmaster tools:
This is the first thing that is required to be done, set up the website with tools of webmaster. For this purpose, visit the website of Google webmaster tools. Here, use the Google account that is used in Google Analytics for signing in. To start with the process, click the button of Add Property and then complete the verification showing that the website belongs to you. The site could be verified by connecting Google analytics with webmaster tools if you are already making use of Google analytics.
Select the option of account of Google analytics. Sitemap submission comes as the next step after site verification. The webmaster tools are provided with the information of site pages with the help of this XML file.
Visit the toolbar and under the tab Crawl, search for add a sitemap option. You need to wait a bit till the information of website is fetched by the tools.
Webmaster tools information:
Most of the important information will be visible once webmaster tools have the data.
Dashboard:
This is the first place that you will come across while visiting the site on webmaster tools. The left sidebar menu will show the following areas:
Search appearance:
This is the first option of left sidebar where you will get overview of site as it will appear in the results page of search engine. The site’s SEO could be checked by optimizing this.
Structured data:
This tab will give the understanding as how your page’s content is viewed by Google and if some errors are present in it.
Rich cards:
This is the structured data format that could be added to the HTML of site. In its results, the search engine can better display what it is in the webpage
Data highlighter:
The Data highlighter of Google is the tool of point and click in which you are allowed to tell Google manually as what should be emphasized in the results of search engine.
HTML improvements:
If Google detects any HTML issues then you will get its brief rundown at this page. If the message of no issues in content is displayed then it means that the changes, updates and whole structure have expected performance.
AMP (Accelerated mobile pages)
Google has recently started this open source initiative so as to offer mobile websites that loads fast and work with slow speeds of connection. A short piece of coding will be received that could be customized with the site. Once done, the page could be broken down by the webmaster tool the pages that are indexed successfully will be shown in a chart. If any errors specific to AMP are there then they will also be displayed.
Search traffic:
In the dropdowns, this comes as the second option. You can get site performance’s breakdown here from number of angles so that chances of improvement are there in future.
Search analytics:
The complete display of click through rate, impressions, clicks and position is displayed by Google webmaster in this section. The best keyword search’s insight is given by this in which the site has appeared. The relations between impressions vs. average positions, clicks and positions changes is also displayed here. The pages with heavy traffic and performance of site on specific devices could be seen here that is helpful in general SEO tracking.
Site links:
Domains that link utmost to you and the site pages that have highest links are also displayed by the Google webmaster tools. The most all-inclusive backlinks listing is this that is available free of cost.
Internal links:
Your site’s additional internal links are these that are displayed in search results below it. However, specification of particular pages to be displayed in site links is not possible. The highest links of site are displayed here.
Manual Actions:
Google has certain guidelines for webmaster quality and under the tab of manual actions, it is possible to look for the pages that do not accommodating with these guidelines.
Mobile usability:
This is the tab where it is possible to see if alignment of all the site pages is as per the best practice considered by Google. If there are errors then the ranking of site might have negative effects. The results and user experience get support when these errors are found and fixed.
Google Index:
Status of index:
The URL’s that Google attempt to index on the site are presented in this report. When Internet is crawled by Google, every page that it come across is processed and an index is compiled that consist of every word that is seen on the page.
The URLs that Google find non-canonical, duplicate or without Meta tag are filtered by Googlebot and this is the reason why it may show indexed pages that are smaller than what you expect.
Blocked resources:
This is the report that let you know in case the site is outside the crawling ability of Google. Though all the resources are not shown by this report and it only has those that you can fix and control as per Google. You can get accurate ranks by Google by fixing these errors.
Remove URLs:
This is the section where you can block a page on temporarily basis from the search results of Google. A page could be hidden for about 90 days before it goes off. For the permanent removal of a page from crawling of Google, the action is required to be done in actual website.
Crawl:
The site performance from the viewpoint of Googlebot could be broken down at this section.
Crawl errors:
If the site has broken links then it is not at all good. If you have suspicion for the same then in the webmaster tools, this section could be looked upon. A complete graph of site performance could be received from here. This will help in the analysis of increment or decrement in errors over time and presence of any broken links so that the same could be fixed.
Crawl stats:
For getting detailed analysis of how the site is viewed by Googlebot, the tab of Crawl Stats could be selected. In this section, you can get information about the frequency at which the site pages are crawled, per day downloaded kilobytes and site’ download time.
Robots.txt tester:
If the crawlers of Google are blocked from some particular resource with the help of robot.txt file that it could be with this tool if everything is as expected.
URL parameters:
This tool should be used carefully as recommended by Google itself as the crawl status of the site might get negatively impacted by any of the URL parameter that is not correct.
It is possible to get powerful insight about the performance of site with the help of webmaster tools and keep the attention of Google. Make wise use of webmaster tools to enhance the site performance and remove any errors if they are present.