Step By Step Information About Google Webmaster tools
- 1. What is Google Search Console? Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site's presence in Google Search results. It was Previously Called Google Webmaster Tool. You don't have to sign up for Search Console for your site to be included in Google's search results, but doing so can help you understand how Google views your site and optimize its performance in search results. Why Use Search Console? Monitor your site's performance in Google Search results: • Make sure that Google can access your content • Submit new content for crawling and remove content you don't want shown in search results • Create and monitor content that delivers visually engaging search results • Maintain your site with minimal disruption to search performance • Monitor and resolve malware or spam issues, so your site stays clean. • It is essential for any strong SEO effort. •
- 2. Discover how Google Search and the world sees your site: Which queries caused your site to appear in search results? Did some queries result in more traffic to your site than others? Are your product prices, company contact info, or events highlighted in rich search results? Which sites are linking to your website? Is your mobile site performing well for visitors searching on mobile?
- 3. • Is my Site on Google? To determine whether your site is currently included in Google's index, Verify like this site:domain.com Example: site:theadmi.com
- 4. My Site is not on Google? • Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our spiders miss a site, it's frequently for one of the following reasons: • The site isn't well connected from other sites on the web. • You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't had time to crawl it yet. • The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively. • Google received an error when trying to crawl your site.
- 5. Google Search Console Signup & Verification: • Step 1: Open any Browser and type http://www.google.com/ , you will get below screen. • Step 2: Type Google Search Console in Google Search Box and select the first link.
- 6. • Step 3: You will get the below screen • Step 4: Provide gmail username and password. Click NEXT button for continue.
- 7. • Step 5: You are successfully signed in, the below screen os Search Console Home Page. Step 6: Type or Copy & Paste your website or App URL and click ADD A PROPERTY button. Note: Here I have added website, you can also add Mobile App if you have.
- 9. • Step 7: Once you add a property, it will prompt for site verification methods. One is Recommended method and another one is Alternative method.
- 10. Step 8: You can verify your website authority/ownership any if the above methods. Here I am choosing Alternative method--->HTML Tag.
- 12. • Step 9: Copy the meta tag below, and paste it into your site's home page. It should go in the <head> section, before the first <body> section. • Step 10: Once you have added, come to Google Search Console Dashboard and click on VERIFY button. You will get the below successful verified message.
- 13. Part A: Search Appearance • The Search Appearance section helps you visualize what your website would look like in the search results.
- 14. A) Structured data • A public XML standard way of describing information about your pages in a format that the Google crawling engine understands. For instance, you can add ratings, event information, or video information. Some types of structured data are used to create rich snippets. • SERP results that look like this are using structured data:
- 15. I searched for “blackberry sauce” on Google. The image above contains the first four results. Look at the results carefully. Two results, 3 and 4, look “richer” because they contain ratings, votes, and reviews. The fourth result even displays the calorie information. Which result would you be tempted to click on? It depends on what you’re looking for, of course, but I headed straight for results 3 and 4. Why? Because the rich results told me that the site would not only help me learn how to make blackberry sauce but also provide reviews from people who have made it before. How to leverage Structured Data for SEO?: Ask your developer to build rich snippets into all of the mentioned features available on your website. Ask them to refer to Schema.org for code snippets and help. Currently, Google supports rich snippets for the following: • Articles • Local Businesses • Music • Recipes • Reviews • TV & Movies and Videos
- 16. B) Rich Cards Rich Cards are a new invention by Google. They work like Structured Data (see (a) above in case you haven’t been paying attention) but are visually more appealing. Check this image out to learn the difference between rich snippets and rich cards:
- 17. When your content is visually appealing, it may translate to heavy user engagement, thereby increasing your traffic and sales. Google currently allows users to deploy rich cards for Recipes and Movies. How to leverage Rich Cards for SEO?: As in the case with rich snippets, ask your developer to build rich snippets into either recipes or movie information, if you host such information. Refer this page for sample code snippets. C) Data Highlighter The Data Highlighter is an excellent substitute for Structured Data, and you don’t need a developer to write the code snippets in your HTML. It marks up the same content that Structured Data does. That being said, this tool has limitations. You have to write the tags individually per URL. Basically, if you have thousands of pages on your website, it can be a pain.
- 18. • How to leverage Rich Cards for SEO • Click on “Start Highlighting.” A pop-up will appear. • Enter your URL, and choose the data you want to highlight (articles, events, reviews, local business, movies, products, restaurants, TV shows, etc.). • Once you’ve made your selection, Google will render the page in GSC and allow you to highlight the relevant data. • You now have to select the text or images per page that you want to highlight. You can highlight titles, images, category, and ratings. • Google will then prompt you to highlight data in other pages as well and help create page sets. • Here’s a helpful video for a tutorial on this feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Xd4d_UW5U
- 19. D) HTML Improvements HTML improvements is a report that reveals any problem areas that Google has discovered while crawling/indexing your site. • Here is a list of issues that may surface in this report: • Duplicate/long/short meta descriptions • Missing/duplicate/long/short title tags • Content non-indexable by Google • How to leverage HTML Improvements Report for SEO: It’s simple. Just fix the problem areas that Google has reported. Here are some basic SEO rules that you may already be aware of: • Ensure titles are up to 70 characters long (or up to 612 pixels in width). • Ensure descriptions are about 160-165 characters. • Each page must be supported by a unique title and description. • Google should be able to crawl all pages you want to rank in SERPs. Ensure that critical content is not blocked by robots.txt or .htaccess files.
- 20. • E) Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) • AMP is a relatively new addition to GSC. • Accelerated Mobile Pages is a technique that allows developers to build fast-loading HTML and JS pages. It is based on open source specifications. • The idea behind AMP HTML is to make web pages render quickly on mobile devices. The number of people using their mobile devices to browse the Internet is growing exponentially. Google introduced AMP HTML to help website owners remove any pages loading sluggishly for mobile devices.
- 21. How to leverage AMP for SEO: • Embrace the technology. Ask your developer to get up to speed on AMP, and then convert your regular HTML into AMP HTML. • The AMP subsection in GSC informs the webmaster about coding errors. Read the Google Webmasters Blog for details. • This section digs deeper into your rankings and reports on links to your site, how your keywords are ranking, penalties imposed by Google, mobile-friendliness, etc. • There’s a lot in this section. I consider it to be the most valuable section of GSC for SEO actionable data.
- 22. • Part B: Search Traffic A. Search Analytics The report digs deep into your site and shows you how often the site showed up in search results. The report even displays clicks per keyword, how each keyword ranked geographically, its click-through ratio, and more. Here’s an image with each category broken down into parts and how you should leverage each feature or filter to improve your SEO. B) Links to Your Site This section reports the websites that link to your URLs and the keywords used by most backlinks. C) Internal Links This section reports on the number of internal links pointing to a page. Here’s how you can use this report in SEO:
- 23. 1. Many internal links to a web page inform Google that this is an important page. As a result, that page should rank higher than other pages for keywords present on that page. 2. You should focus on building internal links to important pages that do not have any or many internal links pointing to them. Avoid sending all your links to the “about” or “contact us” page. Instead, use internal links to strengthen your deep internal pages, such as content-rich articles or information pages. 3. Pages that have internal links pointing to them, but have been deleted or renamed, should be identified and redirected (using 301 redirects). D) Manual action This report informs you when Google penalizes your site for any spam or black-hat techniques. Keep in mind that a “manual action” is different from an algorithmic penalty. Algorithm penalties are automatic and will not be reflected in this section. Manual penalties, on the other hand, are more severe and require you to take extensive action. After fixing the reported issues and ensuring your site contains meaningful content, you must file a reconsideration request to get your site ranking back in the SERPs.
- 24. E) International targeting Google Search returns the most relevant and useful sites for a user. Because of this, search results can differ between a user in Ireland and a user in France. If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, you can help us determine which countries are most important to you. If your site has a country-coded top-level domain (such as .ie or .fr) it is already associated with a geographic region (in this example, Ireland or France). If you use a country-coded domain, you won't be able to specify a geographic location. You can specify a target country in the International Targeting report. This setting is only for geographic data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—don't use this tool to set France as a geographic target. F) Mobile Usability • This report lists problems that might be keeping your website from delivering a positive web experience on mobile devices. • Google reports on elements that are too close together, content that is wider than the screen, content for which the viewport is not set, and other places where the text is too small to read. • Everything in this report matters. Mobile optimization is a significant ranking factor, and your website needs to be totally up to par. • For SEO purposes, fix all the issues reported, and make sure that your website delivers a great experience on every device.
- 25. • Part C: Google Index This section reports on how Google is crawling and indexing your website and keywords. A) Index Status The indexation status displays the URLs indexed by Google, blocked URLs (by your robots.txt) and any URLs that have been removed. If you come across pages that are not indexed or blocked, you can find out what’s happening on your end and correct the errors. If there are any indexation issues, you may want to examine your robots.txt file or look into the accuracy of your sitemap. B) Blocked Resources Google needs complete access to your javascript, CSS, JQuery, image files, etc., in order to index and render your pages correctly. If you block Google from accessing any of these resources either by disallowing access in your robots.txt file or by any other means, you will stop Google from indexing and rendering your pages to viewers. This section informs you where the blocked resources are hosted. Unblock whatever is necessary to enhance your search engine rankings.
- 26. C) Remove URLs Some areas of your website must be kept private and away from the prowling eyes of the search engines. For example, you may want to prevent search engines from crawling your members’ private data, third-party content, or content that is of no value to your viewers. The tool in this section informs Google that it’s bot must not index such URLs. After filling in the “Temporarily Hide” field, you can specify whether you want to remove the URL from the cache or search results or both. You can even temporarily hide URLs and make them indexable later. Removing URLs containing thin, valueless, and third party content can really improve your SEO, and blocking search engines from accessing your members’ private data will help protect your brand.
- 27. • Part D: Crawl • This section reports on Google Bot's website crawl rate, the errors it picked up, sitemap, robots, URL parameters, and the indispensable Fetch as Google tool. A) Crawl Errors Here’s what you’ll see in this section: • The last date Google crawled your site • Server errors (Request Timed Out or instances of your site blocking Google) • Soft 404 errors (the URL does not exist, but the server does NOT return a 404 page) • URL pointing to a nonexistent page • URLs that redirect to an irrelevant page • URLs that are blocked for Googlebot mobile • Fixing any errors will help improve your SEO.
- 28. B) Crawl Status • Crawl stats report on Google Bot's daily crawl on your website, pages crawled, kilobytes downloaded, and the time it took to download a page. • Not all of this information is actionable, but there are some things that you want to pay attention to. • As a whole, this report shows how active Googlebot is on your website and how heavy or light your pages are. • I’m assuming you have already used Pagespeed Insights for tweaking your loading speed and are adding fresh and helpful content on a regular basis. If not, run your website through this test, and make any improvements that it recommends C) Fetch as Google The Fetch as Google tool allows you to test the way Google fetches your URL and renders it. Here’s how to use the Fetch as Google Tool: • Enter the URL you want Google to fetch • The Fetch Button checks whether the URL connects and whether the tool encountered errors, redirects, or any security loopholes. It checks the code but does not render the page • The Fetch and Render button fetches the page (and checks for all the issues mentioned above) and renders it. • You can fetch the page for Desktop, Smartphones/Handhelds and even check the Mobile XHTML/WML (older hypertextual computer languages for mobile). cHTML for mobile is mostly used on Japanese mobile phones, so you may not have to use this feature • After you Fetch and Render a page, you should, if required, submit it to Google for indexation.
- 29. Google can return any of the following statuses: • Complete: Google successfully crawled your page • Partial: Implies that you have blocked Google from accessing some of your coding resources such as Javascript or JQuery, etc. These should be unblocked; otherwise, Google cannot render your page correctly. • Redirected: You set up a redirect to another page (maybe because you may have deleted the page or some other reason). • Not Found: Google could not find the URL on the server. • Not Authorized: Google (and other viewers) have been blocked from accessing the URL. • Blocked: Your robots.txt blocks Google from accessing your URL. • Unreachable or Temporarily Unreachable: Google’s request got timed out. • Error: Some error prevented Google from accessing the URL. When should you use the Fetch as Google tool and resubmit pages for reindexation? • After fixing any of the statuses described above • After optimizing a page with copy, images, or videos • After adding a new category/sub-category to your site • Whenever you optimize your site for mobile (select the Fetch for Smartphones option) • When you change your sitemap.xml or your robots.txt files • When you set up 301 redirects • When you buy an SSL encryption, which changes your http into https
- 30. D) Robots.txt Tester The robots.txt file (domain.com/robots.txt) informs search engines about the pages they should crawl (and those they shouldn’t). • When a crawl bot looks at this page, it will crawl anything that’s not disallowed. For example, you don’t want search engines to view your CGI-BIN, admin login, Forgot Password, members’ private data, and some other areas of your website. • To prevent search engines from accessing such areas, you have to write a robots.txt file. • The robots.txt Tester section tests your robots.txt file and reports errors and warnings. It also allows you to test pages to check for any blocking. E) Sitemaps A sitemap.xml is a critical part of SEO. It informs search engines about the URLs on your site along with the date they were changed. It helps search engines crawl and index your URLs efficiently. • This section in GSC allows you to submit Sitemaps. It also informs you about the number of URLs that were submitted and indexed. • Essentially, the tool helps you fine-tune your sitemaps.xml file to ensure all your URLs are indexed.
- 31. F) URL Parameters • Quick warning: Work on this section only if you know how to code. Otherwise, you should ask your web developer to handle it for you. • URL parameters are values that are dynamically entered per URL. For example, if you own a product website that sells globally, you may set a Country parameter that differentiates pages that should be served in different geographies. • This GSC section allows you to tell Google how to handle your URLs. • Like I said earlier, this is a technical area, so don’t go near it without your web developer. Setting the wrong parameters can ruin your SEO.
- 32. Part E: Security Issues Security issues are a big concern with nearly any website today. Google takes the issue very seriously. You may have seen warning screens like this one:
- 33. • Google also displays these warnings in the SERPs. Sometimes, websites are flagged for phishing.
- 34. If your site has been compromised, hacked, or is simply vulnerable to hackers, you’ll find out about it in this section. If, on the other hand, you see this message, you’re clean
- 35. Hacked sites can be costly to fix, both in time and money. Thankfully, Google has a helpful tutorial on the process, which you can explore here. https://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/hacked/