Google Webmaster Tools (also known as Google Search Console) is a robust tool that allows website owners to track how their sites interact with Google.
GWT provides a comprehensive view of your website’s health, highlighting technical issues such as crawl difficulties, mobile optimization issues, and security risks. It’s also jam-packed with trackable indicators that are crucial for SEO, giving you the information you need to boost your website’s organic rankings.
It’s also 100% free, and for PPC testing, it interacts with Google Analytics and Google Ads.
So, what are the characteristics of Google Webmaster Tools and how do they assist you in managing your website and SEO strategies?
Features and Applications of Google Webmaster
GWT has a wide range of capabilities. The value of each will vary depending on your specific business requirements. Below, we’ll go over some of the platform’s most widely beneficial features and applications.
Track the performance of your website.
- GWT provides important metrics for tracking the success of your website, including:
Clicks – The number of times your website has been clicked on from Google’s search results. This not only tells you how effective your page titles and meta descriptions are, but it’s also a good measure of how consistent your traffic is.
Impressions – The “impressions” measure refers to the number of times your website has appeared in Google’s search results, and it’s useful for determining your ranking keywords. Sorting by page can reveal which sites rank for specific keywords, giving your optimization approach an extra layer of knowledge.
Average CTR – GWT will display the proportion of users that saw your website in Google search results and chose to click through. It’s just your number of clicks multiplied by 100, and it’s a metric you’ll want to pay attention to. You may use GWT to track and determine your highest (and lowest) CTR queries over time.
Average position – Your average position on Google SERPs shows where you rank for particular keywords or pages.
GWT provides 16 months of data for all of the following variables and allows you to compare two period ranges. You may also filter by question, date, country, and device to get a full picture of how well your website is performing.
- Check for indexing mistakes.
Since the last site scan, GWT allows you to view how many of your website’s pages have been indexed by Google.
It also displays any indexing mistakes or warnings and provides you with data to analyse. You could, for example, have broken code, banned URLs, or a theme issue on your site.
- Include a sitemap.
By submitting a sitemap to GWT, you can increase the crawlability of your site and lower the possibility of indexing issues.
It’s a terrific tool for large websites because Google can easily overlook changes or additions, but new websites can benefit from getting indexed quickly as well.
- Conduct a URL analysis.
You can use the URL inspection tool to examine individual URLs. A side-by-side comparison of your live URL and the URL that Google has in its index can be seen.
You can use this to check for mistakes or inconsistencies, as well as see when the page was last crawled.
- Keep track of the links you’ve created.
Backlinks are still crucial for any SEO SaaS plan, hence GWT’s links section is one of its most useful features.
You can examine not only the overall number of backlinks to your website, but also whose domains are linked to you and the anchor text they employ.
The internal links section is a useful tool for examining your website’s structure and ensuring that your cornerstone content has the most links.
- Manual and security actions
If any of your pages do not comply with Google’s webmaster standards, GWT will send you an email message.
If Google finds spam, cloaking, or sponsored links, for example, it will penalise your site and provide more information via this tab. You can also use this page to keep track of any security vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
For a full study and overview of your website’s general health, integrate Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics best practises.
Once you’ve figured out how GWT works, you can start using it to optimise your website, improve its rating, and increase visitors.