5 Reasons For Using Google Webmaster Tools

By Graham O'Keeffe


Google Webmaster Tools should be part of a SEO expert's tool list. It provides a number of very useful features that will help you to analyse your site better and achieve better rankings. The 5 most important features on GWT for me are:

1. Site Troubleshooting - Every website owner should ensure that the coded in their website is not hindering its crawling and ranking. GWT allows you to gain valuable feedback from Google. They will inform you of any issues it has with your site and they will even make HTML suggestions. This is very important information and should be accessed by all.

2. Site Speed - The speed of your site has now become a ranking factor. Fast loading sites will rank higher than slow loading sites. GWT provides information on how it views the site speed of your website. The site performance option will tell you how long it takes to download a web page and how you can improve the download speed. It also compares your website to other websites so you get an idea if it is fast or slow.

3. Link Analysis - Inbound links are possibly the most important ranking factor. Gaining any information on the links pointing to your site is highly important. As Google is the most popular search engine, finding out what link records they have is very important. GWT can provide information on both your inbound links and your inner links.

4. Site Speed- This has become a ranking factor recently. While there are plenty of websites and software programs that can tell you how fast your website is, it is useful to see what Google itself thinks of your site speed. In the 'Labs' section of GWT you will find a 'Site Performance' option. This page gives you an indication of your site speed and compares it to other websites.

5. Geographic Target- If you have a .com TLD and you are solely targeting the Irish market then it would make sense for you to use a .ie TLD instead. Changing your domain name is not something that you should do without some serious contemplation of the consequences, as it can affect your rankings and branding efforts negatively. For those websites that have a .com and only want to target Ireland then GWT will allow you to associate your .com website with a geographical target. This is ideal.




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