Google Webmaster Tools for SEO
June 22nd 2009 3:44 PM
Categories: 
Google Webmaster Tools lets you view your website from Google’s perspective. It provides important reports and recommendations to make it more appealing and visible to search engines as well as visitors. In my first post on this topic, I introduced the first four of Seven Reasons Google Webmaster Tools Is Essential for SEO.
This post covers three more reasons and tips as to why Google Webmaster Tools Helps SEO:
XML Sitemaps
The Webmaster Tools Sitemaps feature lets you submit your xml sitemap to Google as often as you require. Sitemaps help Google find and index pages on your website faster than normal. It does not guarantee those pages will be indexed, but will give them a much better chance. I’ve noticed that since the Webmaster Tools got a new face-lift that Google checks resubmitted sitemaps quicker than before. Sitemaps are an important SEO practice to implement. As soon as I’ve added a new post or page to my website, I resubmit my updated sitemap.
Site Configuration Settings
Inside Webmaster Tools you can target your visitors by country, set your domain preferences which means whether or not you want ‘www.’ shown, and set how often you would like the Googlebots to crawl your website. This gives you the control over how your website is presented to visitors and read by search engines you otherwise would not have.
Common Keywords
The keyword frequency and natural placement in your website’s content has a large impact on SEO. Google Webmaster Tools shows you the keywords Google ’sees’ in your website. This provides a handy check to see if the keywords you are optimizing your website for are being effectively picked up by Google.
Google Webmaster Tools is one of the easiest and most important services for your SEO. It provides you with very important details and control over how Google interacts with your website, and it is free so make the most of it!
Do you use Google Webmaster Tools? What do you think of the new interface? What features do you use most often?
