Webmaster Tools for SEO

What are Webmaster Tools?

They are FREE tools available in each of the three major search engines. Here are the links to the Webmaster Tools, or sometimes referred to as Search Engine Dashboards:

1. Google Webmaster Tools
2. Yahoo Site Explorer
3. MSN Webmaster Tools

Why use Webmaster Tools?

They are tremendously helpful and they are FREE. Google Webmaster Tools provides more useful information than the other 2, but MSN has been improving as of late. In addition you will also be able to find out:

1. The top 20 queries in which your site appeared, and the percentage of the top 20 queries represented by each search.




2. The top 20 queries from which users reached your site, and the percentage of the top 20 queries represented by each click (in other words what terms searchers clicked on).




3. Identify ways to improve the site for visitors and fix issues not allowing your pages to be crawled. This will help SEO rankings.




4. Find out what sites are linking to yours.




5. Add sitemaps here for search engines to find.

The most important reason you would use Webmaster Tools is to increase your search engine rankings. Half of the search engine battle is simply finding out what is wrong with your site. The answers are here and free, they just require you to install a simple meta tag on your index page or upload a file and you are verified. That’s it. You can then start digging in and analyzing your site.

This is one of the most important SEO features that a lot of the time gets overlooked. What other way can you tell a search engine that you are interested in improving your ranking? Trust me, it works!

If you found this post helpful, leave a comment (you get a free backlink to your website, isn’t that worth a comment?). Thank you in advance.