The Google Webmaster Toolkit

When I started promoting websites almost nine years ago (2001), webmasters had to do a lot more guesswork to figure out what Google expected for a website to rank favorably in search results. Google has evolved over the years, continually increasing engagement with its webmaster audience and providing ever clearer instructions on how to rank well for specific search terms. Google has also become more open in seeking feedback from the webmaster community and its general search audience. In addition to increasing the dialogue between Google and its users, Google has created a suite of products that are very useful for performing tasks that cover the full spectrum of website promotion, including getting your site indexed by Google, tracking of traffic to your site from all sources. , promoting products and optimizing your content for increased traffic and higher conversions.

Setting up a Google account
To access Google tools, you will need to set up a Google account. There are a few different ways to set up an account with Google, including signing up directly for access to any of the Google webmaster tools described below. To set up a general Google account, all you need is an email address. Although you can manage your access to the various Google tools using different accounts, it makes sense to keep everything together in one account.

If you don’t have any existing account types (such as Gmail, Picasa, iGoogle) with Google, you can go to your Accounts page and set one up. Just enter your email address and a password to get started. Once you’ve submitted your account information to Google, they’ll send you a verification email with a link that you need to follow to verify that you own the email address you used to set up your account.

google analytics
Google Analytics allows webmasters to monitor traffic patterns on their websites. Setting up your website with Analytics is usually very simple. Sign up for an Analytics account, insert a tracking code into your website header, and watch the stats start rolling in.

Google Webmasters
Google Webmasters has a few purposes. It is a community for webmasters to learn what Google expects from their websites in order for them to receive high search rankings. It’s also a way for webmasters and Google to communicate about their relationship. Webmasters can submit sitemaps to Google to help them index their sites. They can also configure settings to give Google recommendations on how to index their sites. Google provides useful information through its webmaster tool about the links it recognizes as pointing to a webmaster website. The webmaster tool also provides information on keyword searches for which the webmaster’s site ranks high and click statistics related to those high ranking keyword terms.

Google Site Maps
Google Sitemaps provide a way for webmasters to help Google index their sites correctly. You may have noticed when searching Google that there are some results that appear on the results page, but when you click the link to visit the site, the page does not have the same information that was presented in the search results. . Sometimes the page is gone completely. Why did this happened? Because Google has the ominous task of trying to index billions of web pages, keeping their content as up-to-date as possible. They are obviously not perfect. They need help from website owners.
Sitemaps are Google’s way of asking for help indexing your site, which in turn helps your site. In the Sitemaps dashboard, Google suggests that submitting a sitemap of your website will “…tell Google about pages on your site that we might not otherwise be able to discover.” Sitemaps has been integrated with the Webmasters settings, so you can submit your sitemap by logging into your Webmasters account.

Google base
Google Base is a useful tool for websites that sell products. Webmasters can create product feeds that represent what they have available in their online store and submit those feeds to Google Base. Google shows products to people using its product search module, and products listed in Google Base are often included in regular web searches. Using Google Base is just one more way store owners can showcase their products to potential customers.

Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer is an analytical tool that webmasters can use to determine the best way to present content to their visitors. With Website Optimizer, a webmaster can run experiments to see which version of a page is most successful in achieving a goal, such as generating a lead, a sale, or some other action.

conclusion
Google’s tools have made it ever easier for website owners and webmasters to understand what it takes for their websites to achieve success in the most dominant search engine. Understanding and using these tools will certainly benefit your SEO and overall website promotion goals.