“Should I create a Google Webmaster Tools account?” This is a frequent question from new website or blog owners and is also becoming a question that long time webmasters are asking. Google seems to spy on everyone these days and that couldn’t be more true for website owners who are using the vast number of Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Google Plus, and Google Webmaster Tools (among others). Google Webmaster tools is considered to be very invasive as they collect a a lot of details about your website. Some people are very uncomfortable with this and so they never set up a Google Webmaster tools account. But is this a good idea?
Our view is that Google Webmaster tools has a tone of benefits and unless you are a scammer there are no real disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages that we believe will assist you in your web development strategies.
Google Webmaster Tools Alerts You To Site Issues
First of all, there is no evidence that simply having a Google Webmaster tools account will give you any advantage in search engine results. So if you think that having a Google Webmaster tools account will increase your search engine traffic, unfortunately, you will find yourself very disappointed. However, if you have a Google Webmaster tools account, you can be alerted to any site issues. These site issues can range from malware and hacking infections two simple errors in your website code that does not allow Google and other search engines to crawl your site effectively. These alerts are of course free of charge and they are a great insight into how your website is performing.
Force Google To Crawl Your Site Immediately
One area of Google Webmaster tools that is highly underutilized is the fetch as Google feature. This is a very handy feature which allows you to force Google to crawl a new or existing pages on your site right away. If Google notices a page on your site is not updated very frequently (probably most pages on your site), they will not control your pages as often. But what if you make a change to a page which has stayed the same for a long time? In this case, you are able to tell Google to crawl that page again immediately. This way everything gets updated in the search index and Google has a better understanding of what your page is now about. This is also a great way to get Google to recognize a brand-new page that you have just created on your site. Instead of waiting days, weeks, or even months for Google to discover and index that page, you can get your page indexed right away. Many website owners do not know about this handy little tool and it should definitely be used more often.
See What Google Bots See
Google operates thousands upon thousands of very powerful computers located all across the world to crawl all of the websites that exist. Over the years, Google has been able to get much better at figuring out what a webpage is about. In the last couple of years, the Google search engine bots have become so intelligent that they can “see” what your website looks like. Google now knows if your website is mobile friendly and can also determine the exact layout of your site including all of your advertisements, pictures, videos, comment sections, and just about everything else. When you have a Google Webmasters account, you are able to see exactly what the Google bots see. Even better, you will get information about how Google sees your site in terms of health, how fast it loads, and additional critical information that you might not otherwise have access to.
Get Keyword And Landing Page Details
Aside from using Google analytics, Google Webmaster tools can also give you some very important information about how your website is performing in the Google search engine results (SERP’s). You are able to see exactly which pages you have that are raking in the Google search results and what keywords they are ranking for. Perhaps the most important piece of information that you receive is the click through rate (CTR) of certain pages that you have ranking in the search engine results. Google uses click through rates as a very high factor in determining which websites to rank on the first page. If you discover that you have a low click through rate, that means you will likely see diminishing search engine traffic on that page. Of course, armed with this information, you can make some very important changes. All you really need to do is change the title of the page as well as the meta-description tag of that page. After doing a vast, you can continue to monitor your page to see if the click through rate improves.
So, as I mentioned before, simply having a Google Webmaster tools account will not automatically increase your search rankings. However, if you use all of the features and tools available to you in the Google Webmaster tools dashboard, you can begin to make some slight changes to your website and certain pages on your site and see some very big results in the form of search engine traffic. This is why we highly recommend that every website or blog owner establishes a Google Webmaster tools accounts immediately.
