Google Webmaster Tools is a must for serious bloggers

Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 6:04 am

Google Webmaster Tools is an often overlooked free resource by most bloggers. Now I know some have feelings about the amount of information Google has on all of us and that is understandable.

Google Webmaster Tools though lets you see how Google views your site.

From my tracking I can tell you that Google provides me more traffic from search than all of the other search engines combined. On some sites that is by a factor of 4 or more. That is why whether you love the Big G or hate the Big G it is important to understand how they view your site.

Some of the information they give you is very useful. When you log in you see the dashboard and it will show you the following 4 areas.

Top Search Queries
Crawl errors
Links to your site
Keywords

Each of these can help you improve your results. Today I will do a quick over view but will delve into each area in more detail in the future.

Top search queries

This will show you what terms people are using to find your site and where that particular term is ranking on Google.

Crawl errors

This will show you any problems the spiders are detecting when crawling your site.

Links to your site

This will show how many links and to which page they are pointing. You can also see the anchor text being used to link to your site.

Keywords

This will show you what Google sees as your primary keywords and how relevant they are to the content of your site.

These items will allow you to find problems and to see how Google is viewing your site allowing you to compare your view and theirs.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.