Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) provides a wealth of insights for SEO specialists and website owners. With it, they can track search traffic, identify errors quickly and fix them, assess mobile usability effectively, as well as much more.
Google allows them to tailor the results they display in search results; for instance, they can remove sitelinks that appear above the fold of search results.
Sitemaps
Sitemaps are an effective way of notifying search engines of all of your website’s pages, helping Google crawl and index it more efficiently. Google Webmaster Tools (now Search Console) comes equipped with its own tool for creating and submitting sitemaps.
Sitemaps are XML files that list all of your important URLs in an organized fashion. There are different kinds of sitemaps, including regular XML sitemaps, video sitemaps, news sitemaps and image sitemaps. In addition, priority tags in your XML sitemaps allow search engines to understand which pages on your website are more important; this helps improve crawling efficiency while decreasing server load; however it won’t impact rankings. However if your site is large with many well-connected pages, then perhaps having an organized XML sitemap may not even be required – though in that case a sitemap might come in handy for improving crawling efficiency!
Crawl errors
Google Webmaster Tools helps website owners identify errors that could be slowing their crawl rate. By using this tool, they can see the number of pages affected by various types of errors.
Crawl errors include 404s that indicate pages not existing on your website or have been moved without proper redirection. Furthermore, error trends provide insights into the scale and duration of any problems that might exist on it.
Access Denied (5xx) errors indicate that search engines cannot reach your website, and can be corrected by making adjustments to meet best practices on your code; canonical tags should be used to indicate which version of a page should be shown as the preferred one in order to avoid duplicate content and prevent duplication issues.
Site speed
Site speed is an integral component of both user experience and search engine rankings, leading to frustrated visitors leaving your page and potentially placing you lower in the results pages.
Google uses field testing (on real devices) and lab data collection methods to determine your site speed score. Field data may come from various locations or devices while lab measurements take place under controlled conditions. Click here or check out our website to learn more about Google Webmaster Tools .
Optimizing website speed should always put user experience first, rather than numbers provided by speed test tools, which only give an estimate of page performance based on visitor traffic and don’t reflect reality. Instead, focus on Core Web Vitals metrics that impact your search rankings for improved results.
Mobile usability
Google recognizes the burgeoning mobile usage by offering Search Console’s Mobile Usability feature, designed to assist website owners optimize their websites for mobile users and potentially increase search engine rankings. It warns you about Flash content, tiny fonts, fixed-width viewports, content not fitting the viewport size correctly and clickable elements too closely together.
Many of these issues can be easily fixed with just a bit of work, yet without proper awareness they could damage the mobile users experience on your site. Therefore, it’s essential to regularly review this report to make sure your website is optimized for mobile use.
Backlinks
Google Webmaster Tools’ backlinks section provides you with an in-depth view of how other websites link back to your content, providing an invaluable way to monitor link growth over time and assess whether SEO or content marketing campaigns are having any significant effect on its performance.
Backlinks from trusted sources such as legacy media or major software firms can greatly enhance SEO performance, but those from spammy or toxic websites can damage search engine rankings – so it’s crucial that you monitor all backlinks carefully and take any necessary actions if any are toxic or broken.
The links report provides you with information regarding all referring domains and links pointing back to your home page and other pages on your site, broken links or those not currently being used by your visitors. It also displays any broken or inactive links pointing towards it.