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Making The Most Of Webmaster Tools
You've spent hours upon hours building and tweaking your website
until you're finally proud and satisfied to show it off to the
world.
You check daily for the traffic of visitors to wander through, and
praise all your hard work. Days go by, and still only a couple of
people have checked anything out - what's happening?!?
Well, chances are that nobody really knows your site is online.
While it's true that the search engines may eventually stumble upon
your site if it finds a link on another webpage somewhere online,
you'll likely be indexed so low in the listing that very few people
will find you. Let's fix your problem using the huge arsenal of
Webmaster Tools you may have missed the first time around.
We'll break down all the tools into three categories: SEO (Search
Engine Optimization), Site Link Submissions, and Tracking systems.
SEO TOOLS
Though you'll be tempted to send a link for your site into the
search engines (SE) right away, don't do it! Yes the search engines
will accept adding your website to their long waiting list, but
you'll be standing way at the back of the line if you don't prepare
your pages properly first.
Search Engines will actually give a higher priority to accepting
pages that have already done some of the work for them. The first
Webmaster Tool to check into is the Meta Tag Generator. Hopefully
you've given each page a short "Title" (which will appear at the top
of the browser when people look at your page), but we definitely
want to include at least two more Meta tag code types on each
individual webpage.
DESCRIPTION: Include a short description about what's on that
specific webpage. This is the description which will appear under
the link for your site when it's listed in the search engines. Think
of this as your classified advertisement - you want the description
to attract enough interest that users will check out your site.
DO NOT fill the space with random hype. The SE will give a much
higher relevancy score when the description matches phrases from
your actual content. Get rid of as many filler words (the, and, of)
as possible for the best results.
KEYWORDS: These are the main
words you want the SE to consider when listing your site. Don't list
every word you "want", and DO NOT include words that aren't actually
in your content. The search engines may include you temporarily, but
they will drop you just as quickly when they realize you've added
words that aren't even in your webpage.
Rather than listing single words, concentrate on specific phrases
(of 2 to 4 words each) that appear in your webpage. Many people make
the mistake of listing every word or phrase they can think of or
want, but the engines generally only consider the first 20. Focus on
the main phrases in your keyword list: the search engines will find
the rest on their own. Separate the words/phrases with a comma.
If you need help picking out some of your best keyword choices for
that page, use the Keyword Density webmaster tool. It will help
pinpoint some of your best options.
You can add in other fields as you want, but the generator only
really needs the number of days for the SE to revisit. Just enter 7
days (even if the page changes daily) for normal pages, or 365 days
for pages that won't be changing for a year. The search engines
assign their own revisit schedule, so setting the days lower than 7
to try fooling the SE is foolish.
SUBMITTING YOUR WEBSITE
You could set up a webmaster account with each of the main search
engines, but the Simple Submission tool will take care of getting
your website included in the queue with just one button. It may take
a while before the search engines actually check out your website
(there are almost a million new sites added to the internet each
month), so use the submission tool to make sure the main SE know you
exist.
TRACKING SYSTEMS
Welcome to the most useful (and most overlooked) devices to pinpoint
exactly how your website is succeeding, and where it's failing!
To save yourself hours of time and frustration, use the Pages
Indexed tool as your number one guidance to see if the search
engines have started indexing your website. You could go to each SE
in turn, and try entering the name of your site, but unless it
appears on the first or second page, you could spend hours looking
for it (if it is even listed yet). The pages indexed will not only
let you know which SE have picked up your site, but also which
specific pages it has included in its listings.
Want to find out how your keywords or target phrases are doing with
the Big-Three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN), then do it all in one step
using the Position Checker. It will tell you right away how close
you are to the top of each SE. If the results show you're way down
in the listings, this will be the perfect time to re-optimize your
page and keywords for better phrase choices that can get you to a
higher ranking position.
Are you getting slaughtered or not showing up for important phrases?
Then it's time to spy on your neighbor - which, in this case, is
your competitor. Uses the Competitor Analysis to see how they are
getting the keyword listings you want. Tweak your site a bit, and
you may quickly overtake them. |
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