Simplified Chinese blog: SEO secret weapon, Google Webmaster Tools

2007-07-01

At a time like today when search engines play such an important role in the cyberworld, apart from
content management and website maintenance, webmasters regard how to promote their own websites
through search engine as another important responsibility. As the world’s largest search engine,
Google has always emphasized communication with webmasters. On August 2006, Google launched
Webmaster Tools on
Webmaster Central (English), followed by a Chinese version.

You’ve never heard of Google Webmaster Tools? You are not alone.

On May 2007, I attended the SES conference in Xiamen, Fujian. To my surprise, a majority of
Chinese webmasters, including SEOs, have no idea about this great tool that Google created for
them. In other words, most Chinese webmasters and SEOs are far left behind in the knowledge of
tools that Google provides for information about their web site.

Before Google Webmaster Tools was launched, the way for a regular website to promote itself was to
manage the content with the hope that Google can index their website and rank high on search
result pages. However, the webmaster would have no idea as to whether or not Google has indexed
all pages of the website correctly, for which queries, which pages have backlinks, etc.
That is to say, webmasters were pretty passive when it came to search engines. Some websites hired
SEO companies to help promote their sites. Since the Webmaster Tools were created, webmasters have
a place to find out their website’s performance on Google. It’s simple and clear. Most webmasters
can easily use Google Webmaster Tools to optimize their websites.

Now, let’s take a look at how powerful these Google Webmaster Tools are. The major functions are:

1. Access your website information gathered by Webmaster Tools from any computer that is linked to
   the internet.
2. Check and set the frequency for Google to crawl your site. You can also get the information on
   crawling, the success rate, and the reason for a crawling failure.
3. Check whether your website has been indexed correctly. This is a very important function. If
   Google has not indexed it correctly, other search engines could likely do the same.
4. See sample incoming links to your site.
5. Receive information on the queries with which your website ranks high in search results.
6. Get information on the queries that bring you traffic.
7. Create your own sitemaps to tell
   the pages you want Google to crawl and index, especially for those pages that Google has not
   crawled and dynamic pages.
8. An information center with answers to many questions you might have in mind. For example, what
   is a Doorway Page?
9. You can also inquire whether your website has been penalized for violating Google Webmaster
   Guidelines. We don’t alert every site that has a penalty, but we can for many sites.
10. You can also submit spam pages that you encountered using these tools.

Among all the functions mentioned above, the fifth one is probably the most important. You can
find out whether your website has ranked highly for certain queries. If your website is ranked
highly for queries you do not like (for example, “Inferior products”), you will need
to find out the reason why.

Another great feature about the tools is that they actually become the bridge between you and
Google. Sometimes, if Google wants to send out some friendly reminders, say, your website is good,
but for some reason (for example, the website was hacked) it violates Google Webmaster Guidelines.
If you don’t use Webmaster Tools and there is no valid contact information on your website, we
have no way to reach you. It opens up a direct and efficient channel for communication once you
start using the tools.

Now, you might ask how to use Google Webmaster Tools? First of all, you need a Google account,
that is,
gmail.com account.
If you haven’t got one, please visit
https://www.gmail.com, click on
“create an Account”, then just follow
the instruction and you will get an account. After the account is created, go to
Webmaster Central, click on
Webmaster Tools
to start using the tools. The first thing you have to do is to add your site to the tools. Google
will need a verification process to make sure the site you added really belongs to you. Then you
(and only you) can access all of this internal information on Google about your website.

Try out Webmaster Tools, and enjoy!