How to Set Up Google Webmaster Tools: Your Secret SEO Weapon

Are You Your Site’s Webmaster? Did you know you have a whole toolbox available to you from Google to help make your search engine ranking efforts easier?

Here are just a few uses of Webmaster Tools:

1. Set geographic target – are you a location-limited business? (restaurant? service provider who sees clients in person?) You can tell Google to limit your website to only be displayed for searchers in your specified area.
2. Find your 404 error pages – *gasp* the dreaded error page. Do you know which links may be broken on your site? Webmaster Tools can help point them out for you.
3. Keyword research – What search terms are displaying your site & what search terms return the most clicks for your site? Can we say keyword intelligence goldmine?
4. SEO errors – Diagnosing on-site SEO areas of improvement – what page titles are too long or missing?

Drooling for all that data yet? If you have a web guy, you could simply ask them to set this up for you. If you don’t, I’m going to walk you through the fairly simple Google Webmaster Tools setup for your site.

Step 1 – Sign up with your go-to Google account for your business at www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Step 2 – Click Add a site to get started. Enter the URL of your site (www.nameofyoursite.com)

Step 3 – Verification

Google needs to verify that you own the address you supplied in order to maintain privacy rights amongst site owners. There are a few ways you can verify your site, but the recommended method is uploading an HTML file to your site’s server.

Stay with me! I know those words can make you feel deer-in-the-headlights but I promise it’s a lot simpler than it sounds.

1 – Download the HTML verification file via the link Google gives you on the verification screen

2 – Upload it your server. (I’m sorry what? No really, I promise you can do this)

• Log in to your site’s hosting company control/admin panel.
  (not necessarily the company from where you bought your domain name but the company you’re paying monthly-ish fee to host all of your site’s files. Host company examples include HostGator, BlueHost, DreamHost, even GoDaddy offers hosting services).
• Often the control panel address is www.nameofyouriste.com/cpanel.
  (I’ll walk you through the cPanel step-by-step but the concept is the same across platforms – find where your files are managed and then upload the text file from Google so it exists as www.yoursitename.com/_____.)

3 – Here’s what to do once in cPanel:

• Click File Manager.
  For most users, leaving the default public_html radio button selected for location is appropriate.
• Click Upload File at the top of the screen.
• Click the Choose File button and select the html file you just downloaded from Google.
  This will upload VERY QUICKLY as it’s a tiny file. You’ll see in the bottom right that the upload is complete and you can click the ‘back to home/…’ link in the center of the screen. You should see the file you just uploaded in the list of documents on this screen.

4 – Go back to the Webmaster Tools Verification screen and click the link in step #3 to verify that the file has been uploaded correctly. (if it doesn’t work, try downloading and uploading the file again or call your Web Hosting company)

5 – If the link did work for you, go ahead and click the final Verify button at the bottom of the screen.

To keep using Google Webmaster Tools, you need to keep that verification file on your server – don’t ever remove it.

If you run into any questions at all or have problems uploading the file, don’t hesitate to call your hosting company – they’ll be happy to help out a paying customer.

Depending on how new your site is, you should be able to take advantage of the Google Webmaster Tools right away! If your site was launched really recently, it may take Google a few weeks to start crawling your site for data.

Have you used Google Webmaster Tools? Did you find this post useful? Let me know in the comments!

Image: hinnamsaisuy / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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