How does webmaster tools work

So make sure your partners and backlinks are using the right anchor text so you can get that value. Test this out with your top 10 landing pages: Do you see an improvement in ranking and traffic?

If yes, try adding it to those articles that are ranking in the position of Google and see if data markup gives them an extra boost. Under Security Issues in Search Console, you can get a security checkup.

If you ever think your site is hacked or there is a cybersecurity issue, you can use this page to get a vital second opinion. Fixing meta descriptions and title tags is a tedious, but easy and effective task. A great one to assign to interns if you have them. This section of Search Console in Google Webmaster Tools will tell you where there are areas for improvement and what specific pages need to be improved.

For tips on writing meta descriptions, check out our guide. Can Google find all the pages on your site? Sorting by page can tell you which pages rank for specific keywords, adding an extra layer of insight into your optimization strategy. Average CTR - GWT will show you the percentage of people who have seen your website on Google search results and have decided to click through.

Watch for indexing errors. Submit a sitemap. Perform a URL inspection. Keep track of your links. Security and manual actions. BigCommerce helps growing businesses, enterprise brands, and everything in-between sell more online. GWT help article here. Unlike the rest of the reports described below, the Change of Address tool is not located in the left menu.

It can be found in the top right. There are three main things to know:. More major migration tips here , btw. Hopefully, you know by now how Google uses schema. And, that by implementing the right data markup, you can hope to trigger the data on your site to display as these rich snippets and dramatically improve click-through-rates for a notable bump in search traffic.

By viewing stats on structured data for your site as a whole and by type of data, you can verify that Google is picking up structured data. You can also get nice details on the individual data pieces being picked up and also on errors. Excellent GWT help articles here.

Nice article by Portent here. The Data Highlighter is a tool that basically tells Google the same things schema. The Data Highlighter is very user-friendly and can be used to tag at least 9 types of data, and every tag corresponds with schema. Whenever feasible, I prefer getting schema. If hard-coding schema is not practical, take the Data Highlighter for a spin. The HTML improvements section can not only help you improve the appearance of your SERP listings, but also help you find opportunities to address keyword optimization and duplicate content issues.

Sniff out duplicate content. As you likely know, it is generally a bad practice to have pages that do not contain content unique to that page. So use caution. Google your brand. Now do it on private browsing. Assuming you have sitelinks, do you like them? Occasionally, the sitelinks can link to pages that convert poorly or offer suboptimal UX. If you have a lot of branded traffic and a crappy sitelink or two, this is a big and easy win.

The most common big win scenario I see is when a site was getting a lot of traffic to a page that has suddenly become dated for example, a seasonal or out-of-stock product. Just make sure this is the right thing to do. Also, if it happens that the vast majority of Google traffic to a page is coming through a sitelink which you can determine by analyzing the page in the Search Queries and noting how many clicks are from branded queries , then you can guess on conversion and engagement for the sitelink in a Google Analytics landing page report filtered for only Google organic traffic.

Links to Your Site give you data on who links to which pages on your site. We use Open Site Explorer by Moz. Majestic SEO is a third option, and has the largest database among the premium link tools. You also should examine the free limited versions of the three above-mentioned tools.

You should check out the Inbound Links report of Bing Webmaster Tools , which I believe has higher limits on how many links it will report or, at the least, documentation on its limits. Nobody crawls the web as deep as Google does. You can download the linking domains and check to see if a given domain is linking to you. This can be useful if you really want to see if a specific site links to you or if you just want to see what the other link tools are missing typically the dirty underbelly of the interwebs.

Seeing which pages pull in the most links and why is my favorite thing I do when analyzing link-winning strategy. Unfortunately, the GWT report only lists up to phrases. The year of mobile is no longer next year. As you may have heard in , mobile internet usage exceeds that of desktop in the U. S , and mobile is the most popular form of any media worldwide. In January , it was reported that Google has been sending many mobile usability warnings to webmasters; that article also noted the many signs a new mobile ranking algorithm is incoming count me among the bandwagon riders who feel mobile UX will be a ranking factor.

Certainly, Google has been making a serious effort to communicate mobile SEO best practices. This all underscores the importance of the new Mobile Usability report, which Google announced in late October The report lists URLs that contain a given error.

Index bloat is one of the most common problems SEOs deal with. When Google has way more pages indexed then deserve to be organic landing pages, the consequent dissipation of link juice and constrained crawl budget can have a significant impact on SEO traffic. The converse of index bloat is when pages that should be indexed are not indexed, and this is an equally important problem. Often, when these issues are in their early stages, the impact on traffic is not yet apparent.

Check the Advanced Index Status report and examine total pages indexed , the number of pages removed , and the number of pages blocked by robots. For more information on crawling and indexation metrics, read this. This error occurs whenever there is no page for the URL requested. Common causes of s include typos in the destination URL of a link and failure to redirect the URL of a page that was moved or deleted.

Both causes of s can be detrimental to both the user experience and your SEO endeavors. These may not represent any significant inconvenience to your users or wastage of link juice, but many s will be problematic. Resolve problem s by redirecting to the appropriate page, by changing the destination URL of the inbound link, or by restoring content to the , depending on what is most practical and most beneficial to your users. This post explains the right perspective on s.

For example s, s, and s are all non-crawlable.