Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 116!
Google loves webmasters, and I proved that last weeks with out guide to Google Analytics. Have you tried Google’s specific tools for webmasters though? If you have not you might be missing out on a lot of good information on and about your web site.
Why Do I Need the Webmaster Tools?
By using this series and set of tools you can see all kinds of information about what keywords are bringing people in from Google, the Google crawl rate, the last time your page was indexed plus around two dozen more cool tools and interesting resources. If your a webmaster who hasn’t done this your missing out on a free set of very helpful tools right from the folks at Google.
Create and Submit Your Site Map
To see what I am talking about visit the Google Webmaster Tools web site. Here you can submit your site map to Google so that have a better and easier way of crawling your information. It never hurts to give Google everything it needs, so best to play nice with them if you want to see yourself in the search results for your favorite keywords.
There are a number of tools out there to help you learn about how to create this special sitemap for Google to index. Here are just a few suggestions to help you get started:
Also if you are using a content management program (like Joomla, WordPress and others) you might be able to find a plugin that does all the hard work for you and spits out the sitemap.xml file for you.
Once the sitemap has been generated, go in and submit your domain too the Google Webmaster Tools page and then go to the Sitemap tab and then click “Add a Sitemap”.
Verify You Own Your Web Site
After you get your domain and your site map in the system then you must verify that you are the owner of the web site. You can do this either by adding some code to your index’s header information or by uploading a file with a funny name. I would say go with the second one as it is the easiest one to do.
Create your file with the funny name on your desktop, upload it to your “public_html” folder and then check to make sure it is there. Then you can go back to the Google Webmaster Tools web site and tell Google to check for verification. Once they do you are all set!
