April 17, 2013

Manage Your Website in Google Webmaster Tools: Part 3



Google Webmaster Tools now known as Google Search Console.


Think about few weeks back, before you start with Google Webmaster Tools series here. Do you believe you have learnt something new and being even more familiar with Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) than before? If you did, at least for some extent, you can be proud of yourself :) Not at all?! Don't worry, it's never too late and you can come up with all the questions via comments. Follow details with GWMT and you will get to know it better. May be you can teach me after all ;)

Last time we have been talking about how you can review health status of your blog or website using Google Webmaster Tools and you must pay attention there if you care the security of your site. If you missed it, read Manage Your Website in Google Webmaster Tools: Part 2. Now we can move on to the next section - Traffic.


Traffic


Who doesn't love more traffic to their blogs or websites? However this isn't about building traffic, but you can use the data available here for your benefit. Here in Traffic section, Google will reveals how your content performs in Google search and due to Google's long-term relationship with backlinks, you will able to explore through backlinks identified by Googlebots too. Let's go for details and see what GWMT offers you here.



Search Queries


Would you like to know how content on your site performs in Google search? What content helps bring more traffic to your site via Google? Google knows best about what happens on Google. GWMT offers you information about search queries that returns or displays your content in search results.

You can find a table similar to below in GWMT under Search Queries which reflects data relates to your site. Let's take a look at below table and information it contains to have a better understanding.


Queries - Basically queries are terms someone enters into Google search box to perform a search. As the table depicts, in a specific period of time, Google search has been showing content of your site in search results for 4,003 user search queries.

Impressions - Impressions are number of pages from your site, being displayed in Google search results. Here around 370,000 impressions were occurred for 4,003 queries.

Clicks - Clicks are what matters most for you. Isn't it? Clicks refers to the number of times that users landed on your site from Google search results. As table reflects, around 27,000 times, users were landed on your site via Google search results for the same period of time.

Now that was a summary of search queries for a specific period of time. Further, you can dig deeper into available data and find what kind of information searchers were seeking for. Obviously, you will find very useful clues to improve your site.


If you would like to explore each query in detail, just click on the query you need. Pretty interesting information is here. You will be able to find what pages of your site being displayed in search results for that query, and what positions or rankings held in search results. If there is any duplicate content existing in your site, you can find them here too. But it would be time consuming. How many of your pages being displayed in first page of Google search results? Find out here.

Here's a helpful video explaining how you can use GWMT search query information to improve your site. You can find the opportunity hidden in statistics ;)



Links to Your Site


Aren't you careful about who you are linking to and who links to you most? Links is an important factor  to determine the popularity of a page when it comes to SEO. You can recall the post about Google PageRank. If you are wondering where to find all sorts of incoming links of your site, now you just found a one place to rely on.

As Googlebots crawl your pages and pages of other sites, it lists any information regarding links here if they are related to your site. However you may not find all the details about links, but most of them which is sufficient to conduct research and review processes.


Who Links the Most


Do you need to find backlinks pointing to your blog or website? Check out under Who links the most title. It shows you the top domains link back to your site and clicking on More link will reveal the rest of domains too.


Click on each domain to reveal details about backlinks coming from each domain. It lists pages of your site being linked from referring site including the number of links. Wanna find more? You can click on each listed pages again to find specific pages linked from the referring domain. That's where you find exact pages where backlinks are coming from.


Your Most Linked Content


While reviewing who links the most, you can review the most linked pages of yours under Your most linked content title. Clicking on each link will shows you the domains linking to your listed page. Go ahead and click referring domains to find exact pages linking to the specific page.


How Your Data is Linked


Now you got to know who links to your site most, to what content of yours and from what pages. You can get to know what texts were using in links to refer your blog or website under How your data is linked title.

Let's imaging someone links to my blog as below,

<a href="http://www.mayura4ever.com">Mayura</a>

The text Mayura is what we talk about here. The text uses my name but refers to my blog. Got it? Now check out what texts were used by others to refer your site too.


Internal Links


Internal links are links circulate within your site. Simply, links on your site that links to pages within your own site. Internal linking is a great way to keep your visitors more time on your site. Also helpful in SEO as links is a signal considered in PageRank algorithm. But they need to be relevant and helpful to the topic.

There were incidents that some folks were trying to make use of internal links to boost PageRank of a page too. But finally get penalized. Just DO IT RIGHT.

Once you land here, you can find list of pages referred by most internal links with the count of internal links pointing to each pages. Clicking on each listed links will reveal the pages referring to that link.

If you need to find internal links to a specific page on your site, you can enter rest of the URL in given text field and click Find to view internal links pointing to that page.


It's very helpful in exploring internal links, and to find if you have missed any link to mention or already linked with irrelevant content. Anyway it depends on the purpose. But there's opportunity to review internal links easily.


Enjoy :-)




Awesome! Thanks for coming by and taking your time to read this post :) I hope you have learnt something today. Now you can share it with your friends and I'd love to hear from you too.






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Harleena Singh said...

Hi Mayura,

I enjoyed these series indeed, and while I knew most of the things, there were certainly some areas that needed more exploring once I read about them here :)

What I like about in this part are the linking - where and who is linking most to our pages, and how our internal links work. However, sometimes this data doesn't match up with other similar tools and that confuses us a little at times. But it's best to go with what Google Webmaster Tools say. I also like the feature of impressions and clicks, though they keep fluctuating, but they alert you at least if all is well, yet your impressions don't match up and how you can fix those.



Thanks for sharing this informative post with us. Have a nice week ahead :)

Tim Bonner said...

Hi Mayura

I've certainly taken more notice of Google Webmaster tools since you've been doing this series.

I've set my preferred name, with your help and also done a 301 redirect!



It's interesting all of the information you can gather from this.


I've started to go through the crawling errors now too to see if I can figure out what they are telling me!


Great share.

Corina Ramos said...

Yay, part three!

You make it look so easy Mayura :)

I enjoyed looking at who links the most but I'm going to take some more time and go through each tab in detail.

I'm more comfortable now reviewing the data thanks to your series. I was able to go step by step on my account as I read along and glad to see where were some good things on there but also some room for improvement.

Don't know where we would be without you Mayura!

RobG said...

Hello Mayura, Great stuff my friend it's great to have someone that stays up on Google tools. I don't use them that much but I might be looking in to them in the days to come. Thanky uo very much

Debbie Doglady said...

Thanks for this informative post! I will definitely check into all of it.

Sapna said...

Hi Mayura,

Great tutorial!

This is surely going as refresher course and I really enjoyed this.Even though I'm quite familiar with most of the things now but will be used as a reference point.



Thanks for this great share.

Sapna

Sue Neal said...

Hi Mayura,

Thanks for another great post in this series - I'd never have looked at this stuff if it hadn't been for these posts. Thanks for explaining what all the different terms mean, which helps to make sense of it all. The video's very helpful, too.

Definitely a post I'll bookmark for future reference and share.

I'd say you're obeying those 4 laws of learning here, Mayura - nice one :)

Sue

Adrienne Smith said...

And the series continues and what a wonderful education this has been. Thanks Mayura for taking the time to go through this because you sure do explain it better then me.


Would love to feature these posts in my monthly series. How many total do you still have to go?


~Adrienne

Praveen Rajarao said...

Nicely done once again dude. It really helps one understand with ease the importance of these various features and stats provided by google webmasters without which we will be left nowhere.

Keep them coming!!!

Donna Merrill said...

Hi Mayura,


You make everything so easy to do and I thank you my friend. Believe it or not, I am a bit familiar about this process, but not as advanced as you have showed us here.


Now you know me and my resistance to these things, calling myself a non-tech person. But I am a becoming. And most of this is because of you! You make things so user friendly and I thank you.


I have been doing this kind of things and also checking all my links and back links for the past two weeks. A little project I needed to do to clean up my blog.


I loved this lesson and look forward to your next post.


Donna

Jennifer Cunningham said...

Hi Mayura,
Thank you for the clear explanations. I look at that data often but couldn't really understand it. I've added your post to my google plus. I can see you will keep me studying.

Roller Press Machine In Pune said...

Hii Mayura
Thanks !!
I like the way you wrote & tried to explain each and every term. You wrote it very well.
Keep It Up!!
:D

Lisa Buben said...

Thanks Mayura, I use it daily and I love the video - she explains it really well and helps me better undertand the duplicate content issues. Something I've been focusing more on lately. I've got to look more at the internal links portion next :)

Sylviane Nuccio said...

This is a great post Mayura,

I've been using Google Webmaster way more recently to get rid of my dead links and doing this I've browsed around like never before and discovered lots and lots of information there.

That how I've noticed that traffic analytics and I think it really cool.

Thanks for this info :)

Mayura De Silva said...

Hello Rob,

If all the information in series were posted as one post, that'd be too boring and hard to follow, no? ;)

Well, you already started with GWMT and I hope you will go into more details mate :) I know you are busy enough and go through 'em when you are free.

Hope you are doing well over there :)

Thanks for coming by and contributing your thoughts on this post Rob :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Debbie,


You are welcome dear :) I believe you will take a look at it and find out pretty interesting information about your blog, especially about backlinks. Don't let backlinks hurt your site ranking and keep away from spammy links. They will help you with PageRank too :)


Thanks for coming over and commenting on this post Debbie :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sapna,

Ha ha... I hope so dear :) I'm glad if they can help you guys out to be more familiar with all the tools and settings in GWMT. You can refer anytime whenever you need to follow dear :)

Thanks for coming by and adding your thoughts on this post Sapna :)



Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sue,



Aha... I'm glad to hear that I'm following 4 laws from a reader ;) I think the blogger alone can't come to a conclusion about it.

Now that's what doers do, eh? Taking action :) It's nice to hear that you have been following and taking a good look at GWMT Sue. That's what I wanted here and it's better to be familiar with this tool as it has lot to offer about your site.


I found the video as I exploring about GWMT and thought it will be helpful here Sue :) I hope you have gone through your backlinks to know that your site not linked with spammy sites. Keep eye on 'em ;)

Thanks for dropping by and contributing your thoughts on GWMT Sue :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Adrienne,

I'm really glad to hear they have been helpful and I remember you sharing with some of members in a Facebook group too :) If they can help someone understand things better, that's it.

Well, there's 2 more posts to come dear :) I'm not posting 'em consecutively as some folks need more time to go follow with it.

Thanks for coming over and sharing your thoughts and compliments Adrienne :) AND for sharing with your friends too.

Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Praveen,


Absolutely, Webmaster Tools has lot of data and tools to offer for bloggers and webmasters mate :) Now Google is one of 'em. Like you, I hope the series will help out folks to get on with it and understand 'em better mate :)


Thanks for dropping by and sharing your views and compliments Praveen :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Donna,

I know, you are a doer ;) You could have pass it on, but taking action and being familiar with the GWMT is challenging and worth at last. The resistance is coming from our mind and we can change it if we really need to. Isn't it? :)

I can see you are becoming a techie Donna and no room for non-techie talks now :) Aha... Been checking links lately? Cool... I hope you could get more ideas by looking thorough what GWMT mentioned there too.



Thanks for coming over and sharing your thoughts and experiences on checking backlinks Donna :)

Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Jennifer,


You're very welcome and glad to hear it has been helpful to understand things more clearly :) As you dig into it more, you can find more opportunities for your site too. It's indeed a compliment.

Thanks for coming over and sharing your thoughts while sharing this post with your friends on Google+ Jennifer :)

Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Mate,


You're welcome and glad you have enjoyed the post :) I hope it will lead you to make use of GWMT for the benefit of your site.

Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts on this post :) I'd like if you can use personal name when commenting too mate.

Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Lisa,


lol :D I had you in my mind when I write this one. May be you have been talking much more about backlinks and how it affects on SEO? ;)

Backlinks can be real pain if we don't monitor 'em much. I'm sure you know about that than me as you manage retail sites and keep watching on rankings.


I thought the video will give more education to readers and I've learnt some from it too dear :) I'm glad it helped you to make things clear.

Internal links section is helpful indeed and shouldn't that be included in our dashboard? ;) I'm glad if we had such rather than going for GWMT to check 'em all.


Thanks for coming over and contributing your thoughts and experiences you had related to backlinks Lisa :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sylviane,

Excellent! Now you are becoming a techie like Donne, eh? ;)

I'm glad to hear that you have been exposed to GWMT lately and discovered traffic analytics there dear.


Absolutely, you can find lots of information regarding your site and now they can help you improve your blogs to serve better for your readers.

Thanks for coming over and adding your views and experiences you had when exploring GWMT Sylviane :)


Cheers...

Sue Neal said...

Hi Mayura - thanks for your reply.


I can see the links to my site in GWMT but don't understand how to tell whether they're spammy or ok. Any advice on that?

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Sue,


Well, at first we might not able to tell if it's a spammy site or not just by looking dear :) Same applied for me.


You can safely skip the ones you already know and check out most linked sites and see what kind of content they are offering.

Once a friend of mine had porn website linked to his site. You will be familiar as you check yours out.


You don't wanna check 'em all but popular ones. If you find something strange with ranking or traffic coming from Google, then you will need to touch on others too :)

Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

Hi Mosam,


You're welcome Mosam and if GWMT posts helping you to get more out of it, now my objective is completed :)


I hope you will go through the backlinks of yours and check out you are safe on that end mate. Links coming from spammy or lower quality sites can lower your ranking and reputation. So, beware of spammy links.


Thanks for coming by and sharing your views on this post and compliments Mosam :)


Cheers...

Mayura De Silva said...

You're welcome Sue ;)

Cheers...

Barry Wells said...

Hi again Mayura,

I agree with the others: I'm loving this series :)

I kind of had this area covered, as you said this is the area that we pay most attention to. However your post has still helped mate, I wasn't aware of the drilling down you can do to find out who, what and where our incoming links are being generated.

That's been a bit of an eye opener that I WILL be paying more attention to, nice one mate.

With my internal links I've been having a bit of a mare due to my links being changed (some how) I ran a broken link check when I first got back work to break myself in gently.... WOW I found 1,000's on broken internal links where category and page had been added over and over again (in many variations) causing havoc.

So for my first 2 weeks back I went over every post, starting with my 1st, and removed or corrected every link in my posts and pages. Since doing that, and before reading your series, I'd been back to Webmaster tools and let them know I've corrected those broken links being reported.



So.... following your series I again checked Internal links and they're all displaying ok... yay joy :)


Nice one mate, one more post to follow and I'm up to date :)

Mayura De Silva said...

Hey Barry,

Sorry for being late to reply 'cause for some reason my comment plugin requesting the manual approval for this one mate :) Just found out.

We love traffic. Don't we Barry? :)


Exploring through inbound links is crucial mate :) We can know how many bloggers were used to share love for us (Don't you love when you find sites of friends listed there?) and the critical part is identifying the bad guys. If most of backlinks originated from a spammy or low quality site, sooner or later we are gonna get into hot water.


Gosh... That's a lot of work Barry. I always used to check for broken links and fix 'em up else it would take days to weeks just to resolve 'em all ;) I can't think of spending time to fix 1000s of 'em. Well, have to do though ;)


It's really nice to hear you have been checking all your settings while being through the series and you know how if feels when we help someone, right? :)


Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts and experiences had related to this post Barry :)


Cheers...