Free Google Website Tools Webmasters Should Know About
If you have a website, there are a number of free tools available for webmasters through Google that are absolutely indispensable in helping you increase your website’s visibility and traffic. The Google search engine is one of the most popularly used search tools on the Internet. You can find these tools by going to Google.com and then clicking on business Ranking high in the results for keyword phrases that relate to your products or service is going to increase your traffic and increase your sales. Google provides a number of free tools that help you see exactly how well your website is doing and show you what you need to improve, what pages are not ranking and what is working for you.
Though Google offers a number of different tools for a small fee, for the purposes of this article, we will focus on Google Webmaster Tools. This free service let’s you know a number of pieces of valuable information about your website. First, you have to verify that you own the site by adding a specified meta tag to the header of your home page or upload an HTML file. Once you do this, you will be better equipped to optimize your site.
Google Webmaster Tools: Diagnostics
Googlebot is the web crawler that searches the Internet to find relevant pages that match up with the search terms people enter on Google’s search engine. The diagnostics section focuses on what Googlebot comes up with when it crawls your site as well as your site’s mechanics.
Web Crawl-This shows you if there are any errors or problems that Googlebot encounters when it crawls your site.
Content Analysis-Problems with your site’s meta tags, meta titles and descriptive information will show up here.
Mobile Crawl-Problems and errors on pages designed for mobile phone viewing are found here.
Google Webmaster Tools: Statistics
This set of tools focuses on the traffic that is coming to your site and how it is getting there.
Top Search Queries – Find out which keyword terms people are using that generate your site in the results list, the percentage of clicks you got when pages from your site were shown, and what number on the list pages of your site appear in the Google search engine.
Crawl Stats-this shows you a bar graph of how your pages are faring in PageRank as rated when crawled by Google’s Googlebot. They are shown as ranking high, medium, low or not yet assigned.
Subscriber Stats-If you have subscriber feeds like RSS or Atom available on your site, this will show you how many subscribers you have to those feeds.
What Googlebot Sees-this shows you what phrases and content are used in external links to your site. It helps if these phrases are related to the content, products and services on your site to help generate the appropriate traffic.
Index Stats-this tool lets you see what pages have links to your site and how your pages are indexed by Google.
Google Webmaster Tools: Links
Pages with External Links-Here you will see which pages on your website have inbound links coming from other websites.
Pages with Internal Links-here you can find out which of your pages have links pointing to them from other pages on your site.
Sitelinks-This shows you which of your links may appear directly in Google’s search results.
Google Webmaster Tools: Tools
There are a number of other tools that you can utilize free of charge as well. For example, you can submit a site map with all the pages on your site to expedite the process of including every page in your site on Google’s search engine. You can also:
Analyze robots.txt
Generate robots.txt
Set Geographic Target
Enhanced Image Search
Manage Site Verification
Set Crawl Rate
Set Preferred Domain
Remove URLs
Before you invest in any pricey ranking tools or analytic software, check out what Google has to offer for free!
Hidden Ways to Get Into Google
Everyone is concerned about their Google rankings. An algorithm change or an update can leave many a webmaster in tears.
However, I often like to sneak in through the back door. So I’m going to reveal to you some of my Google secrets. After you look closely, you will find that there is much more to Google than meets the eye and I want you to take advantage of every resource. So, let’s look behind the scenes into Google’s lab.
Google Base
Google Base was launched in November of 2005. Google base describes itself as “a place where you can add all types of information that we’ll host and make searchable online”. Now, if that isn’t a webmaster’s dream, I don’t know what is.
Your item could be almost anything: your products, research papers, articles, or press releases. You can describe all of your items so that you can zone in on your targeted visitor. In addition, your items may also get included in the main Google search index, Froogle, and Google Local.
Anyone with a Google account can use this service, so why not give it a try. Google base is the perfect way to get an additional audience for your content.
To find out more about Google Base, visit http://base.google.com/base/about.html
Google Local
Getting your products into Google local can put your items in front of some serious buyers. People often go to Google Local looking for a specific item or service in a particular geographic area. So, if you own a small business, Google Local is the perfect opportunity to increase your reach without spending lots of advertising dollars.
Froogle
Froogle offers searchers a directory of products by category, a searchable index of online products, and the ability to narrow searches by price range. By putting your products into Froogle, you can get some very targeted, qualified traffic to your website.
So, how do you get into Froogle? Well, Google has already been actively searching the web for online product catalogs. For many online merchants, there’s a good chance that Froogle already has some of your products listed.
However, one of the best ways to get into the Froogle directory is by providing them with a data feed that lists your products, descriptions, pricing, and URLs. This allows you to fully optimize your listings.
To get the most out of Froogle, you’ll want to make your product description clear and enticing. Create titles that not only have targeted keywords, but also encourage the visitor to click-through to your site.
Once they are at your site, it is important to upsell and cross-sell. Otherwise you will be throwing potential profits down the drain. Make the most out of every Froogle referral.
When someone does decide to make a purchase from you, be sure to capture their name and email address. This way you can develop a relationship with them and offer them related products in the future.
Now, onto a facet of Google that you certainly won’t want to miss out on.
Google Blog Search
This is one of the best ways to get some additional listings in Google. If you have a website, why not start a blog. By starting a blog, you can be indexed on a number of blog searches, including Google Blog search. This area of marketing is largely untapped, so it is the perfect time to get your particular niche grounded in these specialty search engines.
To get your blog listed you simply need to ping an updating service such as weblogs.com. It’s as simple as that. If you are using WordPress, you can set it up to where your blog pings the major services every time you make a post.
You can have multiple listings in the Google Blog Search because they list specific posts as well as entire blogs.
Google Video
Google Video allows you to have your very own tv show on one of the largest search engines on the internet. This is a form of multimedia that is certainly gaining popularity online. Right now it is in a growth stage and it’s one of the perfect times to get in and be one of the first one’s in your particular market. Videos are also a great selling point if you have a product that can be demonstrated. With Google video, you can now have your very own infomercial indexed in the search engines. Of course, you’ll want to provide some great content too. To check out this new technology, go to http://video.google.com
Google News
Want to get your article and even your picture into Google News? Well, it’s really not that hard. The first step is to go to http://www.americanchronicle.com, Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click on the link that says “submit work”. From there you can sign up to be a contributor.
If accepted as a contributor, you will then be able to submit articles along with a picture. Many of their articles are syndicated on Google News and will be available to the millions of searchers who go to Google News each and every day.
If you are looking to get your press release into Google News, all you have to do is submit your press release to PrLeap.com. As you can see, there’s certainly no need to pay money to get into Google News.
Now that you know about the many faces of Google, you will be able to use many of these hidden tactics to your advantage. You see, there are so many people who just don’t put in the extra effort required get exceptional results.
This puts you at a great advantage over at least 70% of webmasters online today.