Supercharge Your SEO w/ Google Webmaster Tools (downloadable PDF version)

5 Ways to Supercharge Your SEO With Webmaster Tools

How does Webmaster Tools help SEO?

Get important messages directly from Google

Get info on your site’s current presence & optimize your keyword

targeting

Get informed on sites that link to you and links within your own site

Make your site as “Google-friendly” as possible

Webmaster Tools is Google’s own SEO tool. It helps you optimize your

online presence in ways that are officially recommended/sanctioned by

Google.

Step 0 – Email Notifications: Get critical updates straight from Google

1. Login to Your Webmaster Tools Acc’t

2. Click “Preferences”

3. Configure your messages to forward to an email account

Done – you’ll be e-mailed whenever Google has important

messages for you about your website

5 Ways to Supercharge Your SEO

With Webmaster Tools

1. Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools

to fine-tune your site keywords and content

2. Use the HTML Improvements tool to correct some of

Google’s least favorite site content errors

3. Use the Internal Links tool to check out and optimise

your site’s internal links

4. Use the Crawl Errors tool to diagnose & fix site health

issues

5. Use the External Links tool to monitor your link profile

and evaluate current initiatives

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to fine-tune your keywords and content.

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Search Queries Tool: Reports on the performance of your site’s search queries, to:

Identify available opportunities for improvement

See the impact of SEO, campaigns, and fresh content

What does the Search Queries tool report on?

1. Queries: # of different search queries your site appeared for

2. Impressions: # of times your site appeared in response to a query

3. Clicks: # of times your site was clicked

4. CTR: “Click-Through Rate” = Clicks / Impressions

5. Avg Position: Avg position of your site for that query, for all results & pages.

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Select a Search Query to see:

• Which different pages are served for that query, and how they perform

• Site stats for specific search positions and ranges

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

How does my CTR Measure Up?

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Source: “Google & Bing Click-Through Rates - CTR Study” by Slingshot SEO

http://www.slingshotseo.com/resources/white-papers/google-ctr-study/

The most recent study

produced these

numbers use use them

as a baseline and flag

any of your queries that

have lower CTR.

*Don’t stress them too

much – Google Search

results are so unique to

each user that there isn’t

really a true standard CTR

How to Use the Search Queries Tool to Optimize Your Site

Keywords: Step 0: do your keyword research first so you know which search queries to target

Step 1: Login to Webmaster tools and open the search queries tab to view your

top search queries.

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

How to Use the Search Queries Tool to Optimize Your Site Keywords:

Step 2: Identify the Search Query you’re going to optimize for:

• Higher-value as identified by your keyword research

• Start with keywords that are already performing well

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

How to Use the Search Queries Tool to Optimize Your Site Keywords:

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Step 3: Head to Google, search for that query, and see how your site appears to evaluate your Page Titles, meta descriptions, and URL’s – and identify which need to be optimized.

...Not bad – should shorten the meta description so it doesn’t get truncated

...Uh-Oh - This page needs a meta description!

How to Use the Search Queries Tool to Optimize Your Site Keywords:

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Step 4: Return to the Search Queries tool, and click your chosen search query for more info on which pages appear for that query and how your site performs.

How to Use the Search Queries Tool to Optimize Your Site Keywords:

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Step 5: Things to look for: Is the best page for that term the being served the most? Are there too many pages? Are there any duplicate URL’s being served?

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

What does the Content Keywords tool report on?

-The keywords that Google has

deemed “most significant” when

crawling your site.

What Google says it thinks your site is

about. Your content’s keywords should

reflect your search keyword goals –

and your business.

Select a keyword to see:

How many times it appears in your

site. More important keywords

should be more prevalent.

Which variations appear on your

site (ie “system/systems”)

Which pages are most strongly

associated with that keyword

How to Use the Content Keywords Tool to Optimize Your Site

Keyword Content:

• Check out the Content Keywords tab: Do the keywords match your site’s goals

and the keywords you wish to target?

Use the Search Queries and Content Keywords tools to optimize your site keywords and content.

Click a keyword to see how often it occurs and which pages it appears on.

Use the HTML Improvements

tool to quickly diagnose and

fix some key elements

Use the HTML Improvements tool to quickly

diagnose and fix some key elements

Meta description: • Duplicate meta descriptions: Google strongly encourages

unique meta descriptions • Long meta descriptions: Meta descriptions should be no longer than 155 chars • Short meta descriptions: Meta descriptions should be no shorter than ~ 50 chars Tip: resent research has shown longer descriptions perform better.

Use the HTML Improvements tool to quickly

diagnose and fix some key elements

Title tag: • Missing title tags • Duplicate title tags • Long title tags > 69 char (incl spaces)

• Short title tags ? (Use common sense) • Non-informative title tags Generic / placeholders

• ie “Index” or “Page 2” Better to use tags that describe content: Ie “Home Reverse Osmosis Systems”

Use the HTML Improvements tool to quickly

diagnose and fix some key elements

Non-indexable content: • Pages containing content that Google cannot crawl and index (in other words, can’t give meaning to), such as some rich media files, video, or images. (Not involved in this “quick fix” procedure)

Use the HTML Improvements tool to quickly

diagnose and fix some key elements

How to use the HTML Improvements tool: 1.Access the HTML Improvements tool under Optimization > HTML Improvements On the HTML Improvements main page, you’ll see a list of possible errors, with errors that have been found, marked in blue

Use the HTML Improvements tool to quickly

diagnose and fix some key elements

2. Click on one of the errors to view a list of all the pages on which this error occurs

Use the HTML Improvements tool to quickly

diagnose and fix some key elements

3. Work your way through the list of pages that contain the error until you’ve corrected all errors on all pages 4. Repeat: Return to the main HTML Improvements tab and start on the next list of errors, if any

Best order in which to address the HTML Improvements tool?

1. Title tags - the Most Important Site Element for SEO

2. Meta descriptions

3. Non-indexable content

(may be more complex / not a “quick fix”)

Use the Internal Links tool to

analyze and optimise your

site’s internal linking* *internal links are links from pages on your own site to other

pages on your own sites

Use the Internal Links tool to analyze and

optimise your site’s internal linking

1. Open the Internal Links tool to view the pages on your site that received links from other pages on your site, in order from most to least.

Use the Internal Links tool to analyze and

optimise your site’s internal linking

2. Click on a specific page in the list of to see which other pages on your site link to that page.

Use the Internal Links tool to analyze and

optimise your site’s internal linking

What to do with the info you get from the Internal Links tool? The Most Important Pages Should Have The Most Internal Links

If they don’t you should try to build more targeted internal links to your more important pages, or if needed, reduce internal linking to some less-important pages – or both.

Find out what kind of internal linking takes place on the site and find

opportunities to enhance it. Example: If nearly all your pages have the same number of internal links, then they’re probably just in your navigation, and you probably could stand to add more keyword targeted internal links within your site content

Use the Crawl Errors tool to

diagnose & fix a variety of

technical “website health”

issues

Use the Crawl Errors tool to diagnose and treat

a variety of site “health” issues.

What does the “Crawl Errors” tab tell us? Crawl Errors take place whenever Google is not able to access – to “crawl” - a URL as expected. When they take place on your site, it means that your site contains these such errors - and these can affect your rankings. The crawl errors listed in Webmaster tools are classified according to a few different criteria.

Use the Crawl Errors tool to diagnose and treat

a variety of site “health” issues.

How to correct crawl errors? Server error: The site was “unable to respond” to Google’s request for the URL. check your server / the website’s technical back-end. Possible .htaccess file issues. Soft 404: Usually occurs in empty blog categories. Not a true 404, rather the website is responding that the URL exists, but there’s no content for it. Access denied: Determine why Google is attempting to access a protected URL – did it used to be public? Not found: Either redirect the missing URL’s to new ones, or block them using robots.txt so that Google will stop looking Correcting “Not found” can be a great way to “recover” links to your site Not followed: A URL that Google found while crawling your site, but was instructed by your site not to follow. Make sure it should indeed be no-follow, and then leave it alone.

Use the Crawl Errors tool to diagnose and treat

a variety of site “health” issues.

What is robots.txt? A file that allows you to instruct search engine spiders (the programs that crawl the web and follow links) not to crawl or index content. Blocking specific URL’s with robots.txt is a great way to cure Crawl errors when the URL returning the error cannot be fixed or redirected. It tells Google to “stop looking.”

Use the Links to Your Site

tool to review your link profile

in order to evaluate and plan

linking strategies

Links to your site

o Plan and track growth of inbound links

o Who links most to you and linked # of pages

o Most-linked content

o Anchor text used to link

Links to your site

What to look for:

• Have you gained or lost a lot of links lately? & To what

pages?

• What *kinds* of sites are linking to me? Example: forum

marketing initiative leads to lots of links from forums.

• Are there links I know about that aren’t indexed?

• Protip: The fastest way to get Google to index something is to

+1 it.

Other Tools:

• Crawl stats: How many pages does Google crawl? How much of

Google’s resources are spent on these pages?

• Improved indexation

(HTML suggestions & Crawl errors)

+

Improved site speed (Google Page Speed

https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/)

=

Better crawl stats

• URL Removal Tool: URL index that shouldn’t be? Ask Google to

deleted it (make sure it’s gone, ie returning a 404, when you do –

and block it w/ robots.txt)

Conclusions on Webmaster Tools

Important tool for monitoring and configuring:

Critical site elements for SEO & content targeting

Errors & issues

Launch of site, new design, new host

How your site appears in search results