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If you’re not using Google Webmaster Tools, I highly recommend installing it on your website(s). Google Webmaster Tools is a tool from Google (free of course) that lets any website owner view valuable data that can help you understand your websites performance on search engines. It gives you very useful and actionable data that outlines exactly what you should be doing or not doing to raise your rankings on Google.

Here are 5 tips to get the most out of Google Webmaster Tools:

1. Submit a sitemap

By submitting a sitemap to Google, you’re telling them exactly how many pages are on your website and where they are. A sitemap basically allows you to hold Google’s hand and walk them through your website and content so they can index as much as possible.

To submit a sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools:

1.) Login to Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters)

2.) Click “Site Configuration” then “Sitemaps”

3.) Click the “Submit a Sitemap” button

4.) Enter in your sitemap URL and click “Submit Sitemap”

2. Keep an eye on load times

GWT also shows you how long it takes your website to load and tells you its average load time. Google has said that search engine rankings are not influenced by page load times but having a slow loading page can be extremely irritating to visitors and is a good way to lose traffic. Keep an eye on your load times, if a particular week or month your load times shot up you can usually reverse engineer what caused it.

To check your websites load times:

1.) click “Labs” then “Site Performance”

2.) View the information

3. Fix any crawl errors

If your website has anything like 404 pages, error pages, broken links, or any kind of funkiness like that GWT will let you know. It’s important to fix these as soon as they’re brought to your attention to keep all of your pages and files well kept and easy for Google to navigate. Make it easy for them and they’ll reward you accordingly.

To see which pages produced crawl errors:

1.) Click “Diagnostics” then “Crawl errors”

2.) Fix any crawl errors shown (click to enlarge screenshot) – looks like I actually have one to fix on my blog!

4. Pay attention to the HTML suggestions

GWT also offers something called “HTML Suggestions”. This basically is a way of them saying, “HEY, YOU MIGHT WANT TO FIX THIS IF YOU WANT TO BOOST YOUR RANKINGS!” in a more toned down way.

It will show you a few different things:

• Duplicate meta descriptions (can cause duplicate content and land your page(s) in the supplemental index)
• Long meta descriptions (will often get cut off without you getting your message across to searchers)
• Short meta descriptions (Google will often decide short meta descriptions are not good enough and will instead use random garbage text from your page)
• Title tags – you want these to be unique and targeted for every page, you probably know this by now but Google will let you know if you have too many duplicates
• Non-indexable content – if any pages on your site aren’t getting indexed and you can’t figure out why, this can sometimes give you the reason

To view HTML Suggestions:

1.) Click “Diagnostics” then “HTML suggestions”

2.) If Google has any recommendations for you, they’ll be listed here. If there is a hyperlink for one of the suggestions (for example “Duplicate meta descriptions”) you can click on it and see exactly which pages are causing the issues and how many there are.

5. Pick a Preferred Domain and Set a Geographic Target

These are two quick options in GWT that can help Google understand your website and audience better.

Google will allow you to choose a geographic area (by country) that your website is targeting. This will let them know that your websites users, customers, clients, whatever they may be are located in the country you choose. If you operate and sell in multiple countries, I would recommend still choosing the country that high search engine rankings would benefit your business the most in.

To set a Geographic target:

1.) Click “Site configuration” then “Settings”

2.) Click the check box that says “target users in:” and choose the most appropriate country from the drop down box and hit save

Picking a preferred domain is choosing between the non-www. version and the www. version of your website. It might not seem like a big deal, but by telling Google which one your website uses they can focus all of your links and their attention to that version instead of splitting effort between both. This can create huge boosts for your website organically without any additional effort. Which one is better for SEO? They are both treated the same by Google so go with whatever your server is already using and 301 redirect the other version.

To set a Preferred domain:

1.) Click “Site configuration” then “Settings”

2.) Under Preferred domain, choose whichever option your website uses, either www. or no-www. and hit save

These tips and quick fixes will help you maximize your SEO efforts and ensure your website is up to Google’s standards for organic search results.

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