Google Webmaster Central

We have talked previously opening up a Googlemail account for various reasons, including using Google Base, Google Analytics and Google Maps. In fact, if you haven’t already registered for a Googlemail account, we advise you do it before you read on, as the choice and variety of free tools available are too good to pass up.

Have you signed up?

Good, then we’ll continue. When you sign up to Google Webmaster Central, via the usual email address registration (which is why we advise getting the Googlemail account) you will then be issued with some simple HTML coding which must be incorporated into the HTML header on you website’s homepage. It will not affect your aesthetic design and will be hidden within the pages’ coding. This is very simple and Google does give you step-by-step instructions.

When this is verified, Google is then assured that the website you wish to use the tools for is indeed yours, and from this is able to generate you lots of information about your site is performing. As well as being able to send messages and all of the usual features on offer when you open your profile, Google Webmaster Tools offer a whole host of services, including the ability to submit and check your sitemap; set a preferred domain title; view website statistics about how Google views your site, and generate robots.txt files. Once you have registered, click on your website name (it should say verified’ next to it) and you will be taken to your Google Webmaster Tools Dashboard.

Down the left hand side of the screen is your navigation menu, which lists everything you can access under four headings:

  • Site Configuration includes sitemaps, crawler access, site links, change of address and settings;
  • Your Site On The Web features top search queries, links to your site, keywords, internal links and subscriber stats;
  • Diagnostics provides information on crawl errors, crawl stats and HTML suggestions;
  • Whilst Labs offers malware details, site performance and fetch as Googlebot.

The dashboard also features a lot of ‘at a glance’ statistics such as the top search queries which your site is listed under, crawl errors, keywords with illustrative bars showing their relevance to your site, and links where you can see exactly where those vital incoming visitors are coming from. Everything is pretty self explanatory and there’s lots of help on hand should you require it. If you’re just getting to grips with becoming a website owner, then Google Webmaster is a good way to start as you can very quickly learn what you
can do to your site to improve it’s ranking and visibility.