How To Use Google Webmaster Tools for SEO

Google webmasters is an easy and efficient tool, with the purpose of helping your website standout among the millions of websites on the web. It is basically a tool that enables you to track the performance of your website in the search engine with the help of Google's search consoles as well as multiple other functions.

• Google Traffic Data for your website
• The Primary Functions of Google's Search Console
• Verify if Google can crawl your website
• Troubleshoot issues related to indexing
• Re-indexing of new as well as updated content
• Questions visitors typed that lead them to your site
• Number of times your website appears in Google search results
• Click through rate for different sections of your website
• Show alerts in case of indexing, spam
• Troubleshoot issues related to AMP
• Troubleshoot issues related to search features
• Lists websites that are linking to your site
• Troubleshoot issues related to mobile usability

Understanding the basics of the above functions will help you optimize your website for the search engines. In terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Webmaster Tools can be used in conjunction with other Google tools like Google Trends, Google Analytics, and Google Ads to monitor and improve various aspects that are integral to the growth of a website such as:

• Control over the appearance of the website's search results
• Data to conduct sophisticated marketing analysis
• The website traffic
• Optimize website rankings

The key to solving your SEO problems is to make small changes and modifications to the contents of your website, which should help improve your website's performance with higher organic search results. Organic search results increase when search engines like Google can better under and present the content of your website.

Why Google Search Console Matters?

Google stores all the webpages known by them in their Index; this happens when Google reads a page after fetching it from the web. The process by which Google searches for these new web pages is called crawling; this is done by following links, sitemaps, and various other methods. In order to ensure higher visibility for your website, it is essential to ensure that both processes are made easy and seamless for Google. Sometimes Google's Crawler would miss certain websites, this could be mainly due to the following reasons.

• A low number of backlinks
• Site is new
• The website's policy prevents Google from crawling
• Design of the site is hard for Google to crawl
• Other error on Google

Solving these problems would dramatically improve the chances of your website being found on Google search results. The first problem to be addressed is the number of backlinks that your websites receive. There are two types of backlinks.

• External Backlinks
• Internal Backlinks

Analyze Internal Links 

Google Webmasters keeps track of the number of both internal and external links. You can view these numbers by going to the Links section of your Webmasters search console. Both of these are extremely important for your website. Internal links are the easiest problem to solve. These are inbound links that come from within your website. Therefore, ensure that you give links to different pages within your website whenever a new content is updated on your website.

Updating old pages by adding additional internal links is also a good idea. The ideal way to do this is to give embedded links within your content for specific keywords related to other articles and content on your website. Thereby anyone clicking on these links would be redirected to a different part of your website. Ensure that you keep track of the number of internal links for your website on Google webmasters as and when content is updated.

Add an XML Site Map

Providing a sitemap that leads to various relevant sections of your website is also a great way of increasing your internal links as well as increases the chances of your website being indexed by Google.

Analyze External Links and Improve

External Links are a vote of confidence on your website or content from sources that have quoted or used your content as a reference. External backlinks, increase the legitimacy of your website. In today's day and age, the importance of building high-quality links is more prominent than ever. The credibility of the website or domain, giving you the backlink, also plays a crucial role here.

The more credible and well know the website or the domain giving you the backlink is, the better the quality of the backlink. For example, backlinks from The New York Times are much more valuable than a backlink from the blog of a school student who generated a website as a part of his/her school project.

Google Webmasters also allows you to keep track of the external links coming into your site and the sources they are coming from. You will also be able to keep track of the content on your website that is generating the most number of backlinks and even recognize the content that are not able to create backlinks. Classify the content on your website into these two categories, i.e.:

• The ones not generating backlinks
• The ones generating backlinks

This classification allows you to do two things, firstly it tells you which pages and content are working and connecting with your audience and the organizations giving you backlinks. This is a clear indication that you should focus on this section on your website more to scale up your incoming traffic. Secondly, webmasters show you the pages and content on your website that are not generating any backlinks. This tells you to identify the issues with these pages and the reasons why they are not working.

Get Insights on Keywords

Sometimes even simple solutions such as tweaking an article to add more SEO friendly keywords or adding a more catchy and SEO friendly headline would just do the trick. In this scenario, hiring an SEO expert is also an option that you could consider. It is also important to note that images are harder for Google to crawl compared to text. Therefore, it is essential to give priority to texts as well even when the primary purpose of the page may be to show infographics.

Google Webmasters also shows other statistics such as the total number of clicks on your website, the total number of impressions, the average position of your website in search results, and the average click-through rate. All these factors are critical indicators of how well your website is doing.

The higher number of impressions, the better. Higher impressions mean that more number of people can find and access your site if needed, higher impressions don't mean that more people are actually visiting your website though. The lower the average position of your website, the better it is. The average position shows the number at which your website shows up in Google search results. If your content is connecting well, then the aim should be to bring down the position of your site below 10.

Click through rate indicates the percentage of people clicking on a link that redirects them to your website or content. A very low click-through rate could be an indication that your target audience may not be interested in a particular type of content.

Get Insights on Mobile Usability

Today the majority of visitors coming most websites are through the mobile medium, therefore just tuning your website for PC's won't cut it. A successful website in 2020 has to be mobile friendly as well. Under the mobile usability section of Google webmaster's search console, you would be able to view the click-through rate of mobile phone users, as well as the total number of valid pages and the pages that have errors in them.

In the Links section, you would also be able to find a table that shows the top linking texts to your website. In cooperating, these phrases and text in your future and existing content in a seamless manner could drastically improve the performance of your website in terms of SEO.

Some of the other functions that Google Webmaster help you with Includes:

• Submit Sitemaps
• Show portions of the website Google is unable to crawl
• Identity issues with the title of the content and description meta tags
• Give notification when the website violates any of Google's guidelines
• Show the top searches used to reach a website

By using additional tools such as Google Analytics along with Google Webmasters, you would be able to identify the following:

• Average time spent by visitors on your website
• Information about how users reached your website
• Information about the total number of visitors on your website
• Analyses the change in the number of visitors after changing a headline to suit SEO
• The most popular content on your website

Google webmaster is also a tool with which you check the validity of the backlinks at which you are generating. For example, imagine you have hired an online press distribution service to give more visibility to the articles on your website. Even if the press release company has linked your page on their website, it isn't of much use unless it is reflected on your Google webmasters account.

Visibility of your website on the search engine has always been important to get yourself ahead competition, yet many companies cannot keep up with the rapidly changing technology. To have yourself synced with ever changing search engine algorithms and the competitiveness of other firms vying for the same visibility, search engine optimization is essential in increasing visits to your website. SEO Agency in Mumbai on experience, proven tactics, and results, utilizes an extensive SEO program to drive qualified traffic, and more importantly, deliver conversions for your business.