• • 404 Page Error

We stumble across 404 Pages everyday on the web. When a page on your website is not found, due to being broken, missing or a user misspelling, a 404 page is displayed to show the page is not available. A 404 on your website is okay on the odd occasion, but did you know multiple missing pages can result in your website being penalized by Google? It’s very important to remove error pages from your website.

Crawl > Crawl Errors > Pages with Errors

• • Backlinks – Links To Your Site

GWT allows us to see every website that has a backlink to our site. This tool is especially useful for removing harmful/spam links that are destroying your website’s reputation. Remember backlinks are healthy, bad bad backlinks are not. Google can penalize your site’s search engine ranking for having harmful backlinks pointing to your site. Manage your backlinks through;

Search Traffic > Links to Your Site

• • Sitemaps

Sitemaps are important because it enables us to tell Google which pages to index and which not to. Depending on the nature of our website, we often have pages that we do not wish to be viewed or displayed in our search engine results. A sitemap is essential for any large website, and a Sitemap help us yo build trust with Google. We can create a Sitemap and use GWT’s Sitemap Validator to ensure it is correct.

Crawl > Sitemaps > Add/Test Sitemap

• • Search Queries

Webmaster Tools is as informative as Google Analytics in the sense that we can evaluate the traffic to our website. Search Queries in particular allow us to view which keywords visitors are using and also the frequency in which they are used. Search Queries shows us the Click Through Rate (CTR) and the Average search position for those terms

Search Traffic > Search Queries

• • Structured Data – Schemas

Structured Data is a great tool which enables us to improve our Search Engine Results through rich snippets in structured data. We often see rich snippets for ratings, stock availability or pricing. Rich snippets visually enhance our listings and help us to rank higher.

Search Appearance > Structured Data

• • HTML Improvements

HTML and the markup we use greatly affects how Google analyses our site and ranks us on their SERP’s. Poor use of markup, including missing heading tags, missing meta descriptions, or non-indexable content can plummet our search ranking and cause us not to be found.

Search Appearance > HTML Improvements

• • Sitelinks

Sitelinks are additional entries that Google lists underneath your main site in the SERP’s. They appear when a user performs directed search. For example, here are the sitelinks for Selfridges.

Search Appearance > Site Links

• • Internal Links

Unless internally linked, pages from our website are not indexable by Google. Internal Links are vital to build a successful website and also help with easy navigation and helping the user quickly find what they are looking.

Search Traffic > Internal Links

• • Index Status

WMT tells us how many of our website’s pages have been indexed by Google. Indexed meaning read and acknowledged by Google. We should see a steady number of indexed pages increase as the number of our web pages increase. An index status of 0 shows us that there is a potential error in how Google is viewing our site. Check your index status;

Google Index > Index Status

• • Site Messages

Upon adding our site to GWT, we provide an e-mail address to Google that allows them to contact us regarding notices with our site. These e-mails are especially important as they are usually a notification of an error, a health warning or a security alert. It is essential to read and act upon these e-mails.